“You’re very kind. It is troubling me a little this evening, owing to the sudden change of temperature,” said Mrs. Atterton, who was always gratified by any reference to the institution, and would have talked about it with pleasure to a crossing-sweeper.
Mrs. Jebb and Miss Fanny Kirke and Mrs. Will Werrit sat in a corner and looked at Andy as he came in with the Atterton girls.
“I believe he has his eye on Miss Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Jebb. “Of course this is in strict confidence.”
“No! What makes you think so?” said the other women eagerly.
“I don’t know. I’ve a sort of second sight in these matters,” replied Mrs. Jebb modestly, forbearing to mention that she had held his blotter to the looking-glass that morning. “Mr. Jebb always used to say, ‘Emma detects an incipient love-affair as a—as a——’ ”
“A weasel does a rat,” supplied Mrs. Will Werrit obligingly. “Well, he seems a nice young fellow enough, but the Attertons won’t want Miss Elizabeth to marry a country parson, with all their money.”
“I don’t know but what it isn’t nicer having the class in the schoolroom,” said Miss Fanny Kirke, who was thin, like her brother, and bright-eyed. “They’re going through the grand-chain now as if it were a funeral. And look at those young men from Millsby, hunched in a corner together like a lot of fowls with the pip.”
And Norah Atterton, at the other end of the room, whispered in substance the same thing to her sister.
“This is awful!” she said. “I feel I made a mistake in getting them to have the class here. We shall have to make Dick Stamford and Bill join in and start the country dances at once. Now for it!”
She flew about in her gold and black gown like some new sort of human wasp, and planted a little sting here and there until she had the whole company on the alert. Elizabeth talked first to one girl and then another, her slow drawl with the deep notes in it contrasting oddly with her sister’s quick, clear accents. But there still hung about the occasion that leaden dullness which can be felt, but never described, and it was Mr. Atterton, coming in breezily unconscious from an after-dinner stroll, who saved the situation.