‘Spending all her mornings riding about with that Captain Standish, a man of notoriously dissipated character,’ said Miss Coyle, who knew as much about the captain as she did about the inhabitants of the moon.
‘Ha!’ groaned Mr. Chumney, as if in assent to a general proposition which he could not confute.
‘And making a bosom friend of that flashy Miss Porkman, while she neglects her own sisters. Birds of a feather——’
‘Flock together,’ concluded Mr. Chumney, venturing to commit himself so far.
‘How it is that Mr. Piper doesn’t see what is going on under his very nose is more than I can imagine.’
‘Piper is a man in a thousand, madam,’ said Mr. Chumney.
‘But so foolishly confiding. Ah, Mr. Chumney, it is trying to see the present state of things, after having had the privilege of knowing the first Mrs. Piper.’
‘True,’ sighed Chumney.
‘How different her habits were! She was a woman of real piety, equally anxious about this world and the next.’
‘She never could keep her cook,’ said Chumney, doubtfully. ‘I have seen worse cooking at Piper’s table than ever I saw in my own humble lodging.’