“Dear me, yes. I was saying so only last week to Mr Cyril. ‘Four months,’ I said, ‘since you came back;’ and he looked up at Sage and said that the time seemed to go like lightning.”
“By the way, Mrs Portlock,” said the Rector, hastily, “have you heard from Luke Ross lately?”
“Oh, dear me, no,” said the lady, rather sharply. “I never call at the Ross’s now.”
“I thought, perhaps, the young people might correspond.”
“Oh, dear me, no; neither Mr Portlock nor myself could countenance such a thing as that.”
The Rector was at a loss to see the impropriety of such an intercourse, but he said nothing—he merely bowed.
“That was only a boy-and-girl sort of thing. Our Sage knew Luke Ross from a boy, but now they are grown up, and as Joseph—Mr Portlock—said they were too young to think about such things as that.”
“But I understood that they were engaged,” said the Rector, who felt startled; and he gazed very anxiously in Mrs Portlock’s face for her reply.
“Oh, dear me, no, sir, nothing of the kind.”
For want of something to say, the Rector sipped his wine.