“Mr. Deane,” said Mrs. Jebb, “there’s news in the village. I thought I would tell you myself. Miss Elizabeth Atterton is engaged to Mr. Richard Stamford.”
“Oh, how did you hear that?” said Andy, turning his paper.
“Mr. Stamford’s groom told Sam Petch, and he chanced to mention it at the back door,” said Mrs. Jebb.
“News soon flies round Gaythorpe,” said Andy. “Will you tell Sam I shall want the pony-cart at half-past nine.”
So Mrs. Jebb had to go, but she ordered a chicken for dinner, and apple-pudding, because those were Andy’s favourite dishes, and she knew that many a heart had been caught on the rebound. Of what use were the novels she interminably read, if not to teach her such things as that?
She watched the little maid peeling the apples with a pensive eye, putting to herself the following conundrum:
“Did he send that letter I saw a copy of in the waste-paper basket—or did he only mean to propose?”
And her invariable comment on giving it up, was: “Anyway, it’s all right now.” But even to her own mind she did not use those words, because those strange unspoken conversations can also take place between a woman and herself.
All the same she dined on a drumstick of chicken and forced the little maid to do the same, so that there would be more left for Andy, though she knew he would never notice it if they finished the fowl altogether.
The maid cocked her eye disdainfully at Mrs. Jebb as they sat at meat, and said to herself: “She needn’t bother to eat drumsticks—she’ll never get him!”