There are some people with whom everybody can agree, and Heather, unhappily for herself, chanced to be of that exceptional number.
If Mrs. Ormson did not like her—and she did not, for the simple and explicit reason, as she informed all whom it might concern, that Mrs. Dudley “was not one of her sort”—still she was quite unable to resist taking her into her confidence, and telling her all Mr. Ormson’s shortcomings, all Bessie’s delinquencies, all her maternal anxieties, all Mrs. Black’s follies, all the young Marsden’s sins, all the indignities which Miss Hope had heaped upon the devoted head of the late Squire Dudley’s second wife.
“Just as she would treat you, if you had not a spirit of your own,” finished Mrs. Ormson, which speech was the more amusing, as Heather, unhappily, had not a spirit of her own, but let the whole party trample over her at their own sweet wills.
Then Mrs. Black would, in her weak, limp way, intrude on Heather’s only really quiet hour, by knocking at her dressing-room door, and asking if she might come in for a comfortable chat, “for really everything seems so peaceful when I am here with you alone, that I could stay upstairs for ever;” an arrangement, the very mention of which filled Heather’s heart with a terrible despair.
After a time Bessie would, much to Mrs. Black’s chagrin, appear on the stage, and offer to dress Mrs. Dudley’s hair,—an offer Heather always gladly accepted, since Bessie’s chatter seemed infinitely preferable to Mrs. Black’s inane repinings.
“Lord bless me, aunt,” Miss Ormson was wont to say, with a vehemence of expression which afforded a strong contrast to the sentimental discourses concerning her own life and lives in general that had delighted Alick Dudley, “what do you want that you have not got? If I had your money,” with a strong emphasis on the personal pronouns, “and no children” (this fact was very fennel in the cup of Mrs. Black’s existence), “I would enjoy myself, see if I would not.”
“Ah, Bessie!” Mrs. Black was wont to reply, “money is all very well while it lasts, and it does not last long, you know, but sympathy is better.”
“Oh, bother sympathy!” Bessie replied—if she had been a man she would have said something a great deal stronger—“what good is it, and what do you want people to sympathize about?”
“When you are married, child, perhaps you will know,” answered Mrs. Black, vaguely; whereupon Bessie asserted:
“If any husband bullied me, aunt, as uncle bullies you, I would soon let him know the difference. He would not care to try the experiment with me twice.”