"Bessie does not think so much as you do, Deleah."
"I don't know that I think: I feel," Deleah explained.
While she waited for her mother to finish her books she was weighing out and making up into half-ounce packets the tobacco Lydia Day was licensed to sell. She dropped her voice to a more confidential tone, although she and her mother were alone in the shop, where they were doing their evening's work by the aid of the one melancholy gas-burner, to which they restricted themselves after business hours. It gave insufficient light for the low-ceilinged, narrow length of the place.
"Do you think, mama, Bessie ought to be always saying horrid things about Mr. Boult? Making fun of him, mimicking him, complaining of everything he does; not only to you and me, but to Mr. Gibbon? to Emily—to any one who will listen? Do you think a lady—what you and I think a lady, not what Bessie thinks—would do that?"
"Bessie is sensitive—and very proud. We must not forget that—poor
Bessie! And Mr. Boult's methods are not always pleasant, Deleah."
"No. But he has been our friend. He has stuck to us. Who else has, of all the people with whom we were friendly? And we were never nice to him, in the old days—not asking him to our parties, you remember, and never being friendly to him on Sunday afternoons. Oh, how I wish we had been, mama!"
Mrs. Day acquiesced, but not with enthusiasm. She did not like George Boult well enough to regret having kept him at arm's length while she could.
"I am sure we ought to be grateful to him," Mrs. Day admitted. She was very tired; the scent of the tobacco Deleah was pulling about, staining the tips of her small white fingers, was in her nostrils; she did not feel especially grateful.
"Then, when Bessie is laying down the law about what a lady should do I wish you would remind her, mama, that a lady must show gratitude for kindness."
"And why, my dear, are you suddenly fighting the battles of poor Mr.
Boult?"