“I have come to complain of your niece, that bold factory girl, who has been making trouble between my daughter and the gentleman she’s engaged to,” she began.
Mrs. Robbins looked around in amazement.
“What has Pansy done, ma’am, to be called sech names?” she exclaimed, rather resentfully; and then Mrs. Ives poured out a garbled version of poor Pansy’s flirtation with Norman Wylde, making it appear that she was a bold, forward creature, who had actually forced the gentleman to pay her attention.
“Maybe she thinks he will marry her and make her a fine lady, but she’s mistaken,” she sneered. “It’s only a way he has of flirting, but it means nothing, as many a poor girl in Richmond and elsewhere knows to her cost. He’s very wild, but he promised my daughter, when she accepted him, that he would reform. I believe he was trying to do so, but when Pansy Laurens kept throwing herself in his way he couldn’t resist the temptation to make a fool of her. So when my daughter caught him kissing the girl, just now, in the hammock, she discarded him at once, and he’s so angry he’ll maybe fall into some mischief that will make Pansy Laurens rue the day she ever saw him. If I were you, Mrs. Robbins, I’d send the girl home to her mother at once,” she advised eagerly.
Mrs. Robbins sat silent, gravely cogitating. She was a large, fleshy woman, good-natured, and slow to anger. It did not occur to her to fly into a passion and resent Mrs. Ives’ harsh opinion of Pansy.
On the contrary, to her calm, equable nature, it seemed best to weigh the pros and cons in the case. Besides, Pansy was her husband’s niece, not hers, and she had no special fondness for the girl, whom she had never seen till this summer.
Mrs. Ives watched her closely, and, seeing how quietly she had taken everything, took heart to continue pouring out her venom.
“I’m afraid that girl is going to make you lots of trouble,” she ventured. “She will want to hang on to Mr. Wylde, of course.”
Mrs. Robbins turned her large, ruminating eyes on the lady’s face, and remarked:
“Perhaps he means fair. Rich men have married poor geerls before now. And Pansy Laurens is a good-looking geerl—as pritty as your Jule, I think, ma’am.”