“Miss Hope meant no such thing,” snapped that lady. “I meant precisely what I said; that I have no curiosity, and that I never had any.”
“Not even to see unfinished pictures and statues in course of chiselling,” suggested Mrs. Ormson.
“I do not think Miss Hope has any undue curiosity,” said Heather; “at least, I know she has not nearly so much as I. It interests me to know the name, and occupation, and worldly means, even, of Dora Scrotter’s lover down at the mill. In the country one learns to be inquisitive about one’s neighbours. There is so little excitement or amusement, that every piece of gossip is seized on eagerly.”
“You dear Heather, as if you were a gossip!” exclaimed Bessie.
“That is just what I say about the country,” remarked Mr. Black; “life stagnates here; you should come to London, Mrs. Dudley; come and bring the girls, and we will take you about. There are lots of rooms in Stanley Crescent crying out for some one to come and occupy them. Persuade your husband to give himself a holiday whenever the crops are in; you have never paid us a visit yet, and I call it mean.”
“We should be only too delighted if you would come,” murmured Mrs. Black.
“Well, all I can say is,” remarked Miss Hope, “that if I had such a place as Berrie Down, I would never leave it.”
“Not even to go abroad?” asked Mrs. Ormson.
“Not even to go abroad,” answered Miss Hope, deliberately—an assertion which took every one so much by surprise, that no person disputed its truthfulness; not even Arthur, who, feeling his aunt’s words were intended as a useful moral lesson for him, longed to argue the matter out with her, and say he should go to London, or stay at Berrie Down, or take a still longer journey if it pleased him to do so, without consulting any one in the matter.
“You would like greatly to have my nephew staying in Stanley Crescent?” Miss Hope said to Mrs. Black later on in the course of the same day.