I do not say that John said all this to himself in words, even in the somewhat clumsy manner in which I have tried to express it. He perceived it vaguely that night. The actual articulation of his thoughts did not, I fancy, come till later.
CHAPTER XXVI
A FUNNY WORLD
“It’s never a bit of good losing your temper,” remarked Mrs. Trimwell sagely. “You can say much more telling things if you don’t.”
She was clearing the luncheon table. John, from the depths of an armchair, made a sound slightly indicative of doubt.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Trimwell firmly, in reply to the sound, “you can. Losing your temper you never know what you are going to say, and as like as not you’ll say something as’ll hit back on yourself, and you be sorry you said later. Keeping it you can have an eye to your neighbour’s weaknesses, and pull them out to show, so to speak.”
John seemed to recognize some truth in this statement.
“Whose weaknesses,” he demanded, “have you been exposing?”
“He’s a captious man, is Vicar,” said Mrs. Trimwell, and John perceived that her remark was not irrelevant. “He’s never been what you’d call pleased like in his mind that the biggest house to the place is a papist house, and yet now when they’re leaving he’s for railing against the new occupant that is to be, and him no papist at all, they say.”
“Oh!” said John. He had fancied, be it stated, that Mrs. Trimwell herself was not what might have been termed cordial towards the interloper.
“I don’t say I’m wanting him at the Castle myself,” pursued Mrs. Trimwell, in reply, it would seem, to John’s unspoken thought, “but Lor’ bless you, ’tisn’t exactly his fault if he is the rightful heir, and it’s little more’n a child he is for all he’s a man grown. He come in here yesterday when I was stoning raisins for a cake. I don’t say at first I was pleased for to see him. But, ‘Mrs. Trimwell,’ says he, ‘I want to thank you for seeing to my foot. It’s a real doctor you are, for I’d never but a limp the next day.’ And he sat down, and watched me stoning of them raisins, eating one now and again for all the world like a great boy. And his eyes—have you seen his eyes, sir? You couldn’t no more say a harsh word to him than you could to my baby. He stayed chatting an hour and more, and I declare I thought ’twas only ten minutes.”