“What an idea!”
“Well, it is my idea. I thought this morning that it covered ever so cleverly the rotten leaves which I smelt yesterday. I can’t smell them now or see them, but they’re there just the same.”
Lady Selina eyed her pensively, murmuring:
“Really, child, your liver must be out of order.”
VII
During the afternoon Cicely met Grimshaw. Whether by accident or design will never be known. She told her mother, just before Lady Selina was composing herself for a nap, that she intended to pop round the village, but she popped no farther than Mrs. Rockram’s. That excellent woman received her with effusion, congratulating the young lady heartily upon her colour. Cicely’s cheeks certainly exhibited a deeper damask, and her eyes were sparkling. Mrs. Rockram, honest soul, made no attempt to disguise her interest in what might be happening at Wilverley, and her broad hints and innuendoes nearly drove Cicely from a delightfully warm kitchen. She guessed, of course, that Mrs. Rockram voiced the gossip of the village. Tiddy, she reflected, would have been immensely amused. A Chandos merely achieved exasperation tempered by patience. Nevertheless, she was sensible that Wilverley had become immensely remote, and its lord a mere vibrant blur upon the horizon.
“I didn’t come here to talk about Wilverley,” she said.
“No, no, suttingly not. But I’m such an old friend, Miss Cicely, so you’ll forgive me, won’t you? I held you and Master Brian in my arms when you wasn’t two hours born. I mind me how Master Brian yowled when he was bathed, and I says to Rockram, I says: ‘You mark me, Thomas Rockram, that young man’ll never like water’—and he never did.”
Cicely laughed.
“You tell me about Upworthy. Is there much sickness?”