“My dear mother,” said the young squire rather impatiently, “Is it not rather foolish of you to speak of Beatrice Lambent as ‘poor girl’? She must be past thirty.”
“I was not speaking of Beatrice Lambent, my dear,” said Mrs Canninge; “though, really, George, I do not think you ought to jump at conclusions like that about dear Beatrice’s age, which is, as she informed me herself, twenty-five. I was speaking of their protégée at the Vicarage.”
“I beg your pardon,” said George Canninge. “I did not know, though, that they had a protégée.”
“Well, perhaps I am not quite correct, my dear boy, in calling her their protégée; but they certainly have taken great interest in her, and it seems very sad for her to have turned out so badly. They took such pains about getting the right sort of person, too.”
“Whom do you mean?” said the young man carelessly; “their new cook? Why, the parson was bragging about her tremendously the other day when he dined here—a woman who could make soup fit for a prince out of next to nothing.”
“My dear boy, how you do run away, and how cynically and bitterly you speak!” exclaimed Mrs Canninge, laying her hands upon her son’s shoulders. “I was not speaking of Mr Lambent’s cook; I meant the new schoolmistress.”
There was a pause.
“I felt his heart give a great throb,” said Mrs Canninge to herself. “Calm as he is striving to be, I can understand him, and read him as easily as can be.”
“Indeed!” said George Canninge at last, as soon as he could master his emotion. “I was not aware the Vicarage people thought so much of Miss—of the new schoolmistress.”
“Well, you see, dear, she is only a schoolmistress, but they have been very kind and considerate to her. They found her to be a young person of prepossessing manners, and, like all country people, they took it for granted that she would be worthy of trust; and, therefore this discovery must have been a great shock to them.”