Penhallow looked at her with undisguised contempt. “Lord, my dear, if ever I met such a soft fool as you! Don’t you know a hot-blooded wench when you see one? She’s got a warm eye, that girl of yours, and there ain’t a trick in the game she isn’t up to, you mark my words!”
“I think you’re all of you most unfair about Loveday!” Faith said, in her most complaining tone. “It’s simply because she’s my maid that you say these disgusting things about her!”
“I don’t trust the gal,” said Clara, who was sitting by the fire, engaged upon yards of her interminable crochetwork. “She’s sly. You’ll have Bart or Con gettin’ mixed up with her, if you don’t take care, Adam.”
He gave a laugh. “They’ve been wasting their time if one or other of them hasn’t got mixed up with her already, old girl,” he remarked. “Damn it all, the wench has been in the house close on a year!”
“It was all right before Faith took her out of the kitchen where she belongs,” said Clara. “I don’t hold with puttin’ ideas into gals’ heads.”
But Penhallow refused for once to condemn his wife’s actions, merely saying derisively: “Bless your silly old heart, Clara, you can’t put ideas into the heads of girls like that ripe bit of goods: they grow there.”
“In any case, I don’t see what it has to do with you, Clara,” said Faith tactlessly. “I’m sure I have a perfect right to employ whom I choose for my personal maid!”
Penhallow rolled an eye in her direction. “Who said you hadn’t? Don’t, for God’s sake, start one of your grievances! It’s coming to something if Clara can’t give her opinion without having you jump down her throat!”
“Oh, well!” said Clara peaceably. “I wasn’t criticisin’ you, my dear. It isn’t anything to do with me, though that Bart of yours is a young rascal, Adam, and the way the gals fall for him is shockin’.”
He roared with laughter. “Spit and image of me!” he declared. “He’s the best of the bunch, when all’s said and done!”