“I do, Johnny Ludlow. I do think he ought to have it; that in right and justice no one has so great a claim to it as he,” she impressively answered. “But, as Dr. Galliard says, ‘oughts’ go for nothing in Church patronage. William Lake is a good, earnest, intellectual man; he has grown grey in the service of the parish, and yet, now that the living is vacant, he has no more chance of it than that silly young Chisholm has—not half as much, I dare say, if the young fellow were only in priest’s orders. It is but a common case: scores of curates who have to work on, neglected, to their lives’ end could testify to it. Here we are, Johnny. This is Mrs. Topcroft’s.”
Knocking at the house-door—a small house standing ever so far back from the road—we were shown by a young servant into a pleasant parlour. Emma Topcroft, a merry, bright, laughing girl, of eighteen or nineteen, sat there at work with silks and black velvet. If I had the choice given me between her and Miss Cattledon, thought I, as Mr. Lake seems to have, I know which of the two I should choose.
“Mamma is making a rice-pudding in the kitchen,” she said, spreading her work out on the table for Miss Deveen to see.
“You are doing it very nicely, Emma. And I have brought you the fresh silks. I could not get them before: they had to send the patterns into town. Is the other screen begun?”
“Oh yes; and half done,” answered Emma, briskly, as she opened the drawer of a-work-table, and began unfolding another square of velvet from its tissue paper. “I do the sober colours in both screens first, and leave the bright ones till last. Here’s the mother.”
Mrs. Topcroft came in, turning down her sleeves at the wrist; a little woman, quite elderly. I liked her the moment I saw her. She was homely and motherly, with the voice and manners of a lady.
“I came to bring Emma the silks, and to see how the work was getting on,” said Miss Deveen as she shook hands. “And what a grievous thing this is about Mr. Selwyn!”
Mrs. Topcroft lifted her hands pityingly. “It has made Mr. Lake quite ill,” she answered; “I can see it. And”—dropping her voice—“they say there will be little, or nothing, for Mrs. Selwyn and the children.”
“Yes, there will; though perhaps not much,” corrected Miss Deveen. “Mrs. Selwyn has two hundred a-year of her own. I happen to know it.”