“Whom does she delight?” I asked, determined to get at the bottom of this legend. “Not the police, I’ll be bound, for she takes the bread out of their mouths.”
“Oh, what nonsense,” said Mrs. Merchant. “Has she been scolding you? I expect you deserved it.”
“Who first started the idea that she was anything in particular?” I asked. “Did she tell you she was in the confidence of the angels?—and, if so, can she produce any evidence of such favouritism?”
I could get nothing more definite than the same vague rumours of her merit repeated again and again. It is evidently just as I thought. The idea has got about that she does a lot of good. I am inclined to put an advertisement in the local papers:
SUSPECTED DISCOVERY OF A GIGANTIC SOCIAL HOAX
£5 reward to any man, woman or child, who will give satisfactory proof of having received moral, spiritual, or financial benefit at any time from the well-known society leader, Mrs. Evangelette de Rougemont (or whatever her name is).
I believe that the mammoth would provide funds for a commission to investigate the whole matter, if she were persuaded that it were for the good of the town. Most probably, though, she would do nothing of the sort. She would say that we all stand in need of improvement, and that a borrowed twopenny dip strapped to the back of a blind weasel may be tiresome and even dangerous in society, but it all helps to keep up the idea that there is a good fire burning somewhere. I can imagine her saying it with perfect conviction.
Yours ever,
Georgina.