“And I’ve intimated to him that I’m about to make my will—I haven’t the slightest notion of doing it for the next twenty years—but the mere hint always brings Edmund to terms, and so he went over to Millenbeck to call. He came back perfectly delighted. The house is charming, Throckmorton is a prince of hospitality, and I don’t suppose poor Edmund ever was treated with so much consideration by a man of sense in his life before.” Mrs. Temple groaned, but Mrs. Sherrard kept on, cutting her eye at Judith, who was the only person at Barn Elms that knew a joke when she saw it. Judith bent over her work, laughing. “I met Throckmorton in the road next day. ‘So you dragooned the parson into calling on the Philistine,’ he said. Of course I tried to deny it, after a fashion; but Throckmorton won’t be humbugged—can’t be, in fact—and I had to own up. ‘You can’t say Edmund’s not a gentleman,’ said I, ‘and he is the most good-natured poor soul; and if he had broken his nose, or got cross-eyed in early youth, he really would have cut quite a respectable figure in the world.’ ‘That’s true,’ answered George, laughing, and looking so like he did long years ago, ‘but you’ll admit, Mrs. Sherrard, that he is too infernally handsome for his own good.’ ‘Decidedly,’ said I.”
“Katharine Sherrard,” solemnly began Mrs. Temple, who habitually called Mrs. Sherrard Kitty, except at weddings and funerals, and upon occasions like the present, when her feelings were wrought up, “the way you talk about Edmund Morford is a grief and a sorrow to me. He is a clergyman of our church, and it is not becoming for women to deride the men of their own blood. Men must rule, Katharine Sherrard. It is so ordered by the divine law.”
“Jane Temple,” answered Mrs. Sherrard, “you may add by the human law, too; but some women—”
“Set both at naught,” answered Mrs. Temple, piously and sweetly.
“They do, indeed,” fervently responded Mrs. Sherrard, having in view General Temple’s complete subjugation. “But now about the party. The general must come, of course. I wish I could persuade you.”
“I have not been to a party since before the war, and now I shall never go to another one.”
“But Judith and Jacqueline will come.”
At this a deep flush rose in Judith’s face.
“I don’t go to parties, Mrs. Sherrard.”
“I know; but you must come to this one.”