“But—Josiah!” ventured a quavering voice.
“Not a word, Mother. My mind’s made up. That gel has fairly made the name o’ Munt stink in the nostrils of the nation. Not ten minutes ago that rotten little dog Bill Hollis flung it in my teeth as I came in at the front gate. The little wastrel happened to be passing and he called after me, ‘Sally out of Quod yet?’ One o’ these days I’ll quod him—the little skunk—or Josiah Munt J.P. is not my name.”
Maria continued to weep copiously but in silence. She dare not make her grief vocal with the stern eye of her husband upon her. The tragedy of her eldest girl’s defiance, now sixteen years old, was still green in her memory. Josiah had given Amelia plainly to understand that if she married William Hollis he would never speak to her again and he had kept his word. Maria had not got over it even yet; and now their youngest girl, Sally, on whose upbringing a fabulous sum had been lavished, had disgraced them in the sight of everybody.
Josiah was meting out justice no doubt, but mothers are apt to be irrational where their offspring are concerned; and had Maria been able to muster the courage she would have broken a lance with him, even now, in this matter of the youngest girl. But she was afraid of him. And she knew he was in the right. Sally’s name had appeared in all the papers. That morning, by a cruel stroke, they had come out with her portrait—Miss Sarah Ann Munt, youngest daughter of Alderman Munt J.P. of Blackhampton, sentenced to six weeks hard labor. Yes, it was cruel! It would take her father a long time to get over it. And for Maria herself, it was like the loss in infancy of the young Josiah; it was a thing she would always remember but never quite be able to grasp.
The silence grew intolerable. At last it was broken by Gertrude Preston.
“You’ll be having splendid roses, Josiah—next year.” Those mincing tones, quite cool and untroubled, somehow did wonders. Josiah had always been a noted rose grower and as his sister-in-law pointed elegantly to the rows of young bushes beyond the drawing-room windows something in him began to respond. After all that was his great asset as a human entity: the power to react strongly and readily to the many things in which he was interested.
“Aye,” he said, almost gratefully. “Next year they’ll be a sight. I’ve had a double course o’ manure put down.”
“I hope there’ll be some of my favorite Gloire de Dijons,” said Gerty with fervor.
“You bet there will be. There’s a dozen bushes over yond. By the way, Gert, you’re comin’ to the show to-morrow week.”
Miss Preston, for all her enthusiasm for roses, was not sure that she could get to the show. But Josiah informed her that she would have to come. And he enforced his command by taking a leather case from his breast pocket and producing a small blue card on which was printed: