“That’s why so many of them can’t get there,” said Mrs. Atterton, who knew perfectly well what she meant. But Norah, not unnaturally, thought her mother was talking nonsense again, sweet old dear, and asked if she should fetch her a cup of tea.
Andy meantime had deposited his aunt with Miss Banks, daughter of the Vicar of Millsby, while Dick Stamford after seeing that Elizabeth was not available had taken the Dixon girls to see the greenhouses.
“Dear boy—like a son to me—and my girls are devoted to him, though he is no blood relations,” purred Mrs. Dixon to Miss Banks as they watched the young Vicar of Gaythorpe stroll across the grass towards the tennis courts. “So delighted to find him in such a pleasant neighbourhood. We have just been lunching with the Stamfords. I was glad to have the opportunity of getting a few hints for the furnishing of a place that a friend of mine, Lady Jones, has taken. I made,” she creaked towards Miss Banks with confidential importance, “I don’t mind telling you that I made a tentative offer for the tapestries. Nothing settled, of course. But I know how most of these old county families are situated nowadays.”
“The tapestries at Gaythorpe?” gasped Miss Banks, in much the same tone as if Mrs. Dixon had proposed purchasing Westminster Abbey. “You made an offer for the Gaythorpe tapestries?”
“Not for myself,” said Mrs. Dixon, with proud humility, waving a tight white glove. “We are quite poor people. But to Lady Jones money is no object. And we are like sisters.”
“How nice!” murmured Miss Banks vaguely, quite out of her bearings. “Oh, here are the Miss Birketts coming across to speak to me.”
“And my nephew is joining Miss Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Dixon, putting up her eyeglasses. “Sweet girl! We met her at Marshaven. She was staying somewhere with an aunt.”
“Oh yes,” said Miss Banks, glancing at Mrs. Dixon’s tight fringe, and reflecting on the passing vision of Phyllis and Irene. They were all new to the county, and they wore and did the very things which had been repressed in her from the moment she left school lest she should be cast out from the charmed circle, and yet they were intimately in it.
Miss Banks accepted an ice and gave the puzzle up, just at the moment when Andy was shaking hands with Elizabeth in the green distance beneath the mulberry trees.
“I was sorry to miss you that day you called upon my aunt,” she said.