“Oh but surely you will try and find her, Lucy!” said Miss Fox Temple.
“Try and find her! We are doing our best. My husband says he will get the police to search for the girl. And there are my own children! Molly is almost breaking her heart about the creature. It is all terrible! Oh, of course, my dear Lucretia, she will be found, there is no doubt on that point; but the thing is this: what is to be done when we do find her?”
“Yes, that is the thing,” said Miss Fox Temple.
“You must try and imagine for yourself the state of ignorance that child is in,” was Mrs. Wyndham’s next remark. “She knows less than nothing; there isn’t a servant in my establishment who does not think she is a disgrace. She can’t hold her knife and fork. I questioned Molly, and she confessed that Peggy eats with her fingers and she speaks like a young savage; in fact, I don’t understand her language; it is an unknown tongue to me. She has no knowledge of anything, as far as I can make out, and only wants to go back to her state of savagery. Now, would you believe it, my dear Lucretia, my husband wants that girl to go to The Red Gables at the end of the holidays with my own two girls? Is it reasonable, is it fair?”
“It certainly sounds to me the reverse of reasonable or fair,” was Miss Fox Temple’s answer.
“You promised when I saw you before that you would have a talk with him. Can you come over this evening and do so? I’m sure he will be reasonable with you, he always is.”
“I will do my best. If I had the management of that child I should send her to a quiet, respectable woman, a little above the people who brought her up, and leave her with this person for about a year; from there give her a good governess, say in the house of the same person; that might occupy another year. Then, at the end of that time she might be able to take up the position your husband wishes her to assume in your house.”
“Oh but he will never consent—never, never; I know him,” said Mrs. Wyndham. “I must say I think men are trying at times.”
The two ladies talked and talked as ladies will. They soon left poor little Irish Peggy behind in their special interest in one or two subjects of local gossip. The time flew, the whole morning went by, Miss Fox Temple induced her friend to stay to lunch with her, and Mrs. Wyndham, nothing loath, agreed. “I do not want to go home now,” she said, “while that horrible little viper is about.”
“But I thought you gave me to understand that the poor viper had disappeared.”