Here Mrs. Ramshorn beckoned the attendance of the curate where she sat a few yards off on the other side of Leopold. She was a little ashamed of having condescended to lose her temper, and when the curate went up to her, said, with an attempt at gaiety:
“Is your odd little friend, as you call him, all—?”
And she tapped her lace-cap carefully with her finger.
“Rather more so than most people,” answered Wingfold. “He is a very remarkable man.”
“He speaks as if he had seen better days—though where he can have gathered such detestable revolutionary notions, I can’t think.”
“He is a man of education, as you see,” said the curate.
“You don’t mean he has been to Oxford or Cambridge?”
“No. His education has been of a much higher sort than is generally found there. He knows ten times as much as most university men.”
“Ah! yes; but that goes for nothing: he hasn’t the standing. And if he had been to Oxford, he never could have imbibed such notions. Besides—his manners! To speak of the clergy as he did in the hearing of one whose whole history is bound up with the church!”
She meant herself, not Wingfold.