"As Mr. Curzon; you might think his life depended on this school business. I really could not follow all he said this afternoon; but, apparently, he and Mr. Lessing have come to grief already about it. There's another earnest one—with this difference between them: that Mr. Curzon is earnest and agreeable, and Mr. Lessing earnest and disagreeable."
"He's more tiresome than disagreeable, May. I call it tiresome to live in a cottage instead of a house, and to keep his sister from church—I suppose that that is his doing,—and to upset us all when we are quiet and happy. He's paying such high wages, they say, to the men he has set at work over the drainage of some of his cottages, that I expect all our men will be asking us to raise theirs."
"I wonder which of them is right?" said May, returning to the subject of the schools.
"Mr. Curzon, of course; he's a clergyman, my dear!"
"Then you will go to the meeting to-night."
"You must be crazed, May, to think of such a thing. I go to a school meeting! If there is one type of woman I dislike more than another, it's the one to be found on platforms."
"I had not thought of you on a platform exactly. It only occurred to me that you would give Mr. Curzon your moral support, as your sympathies go with him. You carry weight, you see," which was true in more senses than one.
Mrs. Webster put the most favourable interpretation upon the phrase.
"Of course, if you really think it my duty, May," she said, softening visibly, "and would come with me——"
"Oh, I intend going anyhow," interposed May, carelessly.