“And don’t forget to get up when you are called, dear,” said Mrs. Eastwood; “and do work, there’s a good boy. I am sure you have plenty of brains, if you will only take the trouble.”
Dick shrugged his shoulders, as he went off cheerful after his long walk. I don’t know that his brains were at all superabundant; and he was not fond of work; but after the clever and refined Frederick the very sight of this honest fellow, weighted to the ground as he was by the burden of the coming Exam., was a consolation to everybody belonging to him. The mother and daughter had a final consultation before they too left the drawing-room. There had to be beer ordered for the gardener, who came in much more overwhelmed by the fatigue of his bootless walk than Dick was, depressed about things in general, and taking a dark view of Innocent’s prospects in particular.
“Gentlemen don’t like to be followed about like that,” he said oracularly, “no more nor I would myself. Women should know as their place is at ’ome, and make up their minds to it.”
This, it is true, was said down-stairs to a sympathetic housemaid; but, being an old servant, the gardener felt that he might unfold his mind a little, even to his mistress.
“I’d give the young lady a word, mum,” he said, strong in his own sense of injury, as having lost his Sunday evening’s ease and leisure through her means. “I’d let her know, whatever may be furrin’ ways, as this sort o’ thing won’t do—not in England. It ain’t the thing for a young gell. In furrin’ parts there’s many ways as ain’t like ours—so I’m told—dancing all over the place of Sundays, and that sort; but not to be hard upon her the first time, nor nothing violent, I’d jest give her a word—that it won’t do, not here.”
“You may be sure I will say all that is necessary,” said Mrs. Eastwood, half laughing, half angry. “My niece went out to go to church, and went to the little chapel in the road, and got frightened, poor child. That is the whole matter.”
“Ah, ma’am, you’re a simple ’earted one,” said the man, shaking his head with a scepticism that no asseveration could have touched.
The maids, too, were of opinion that Mrs. Eastwood was a very simple ’earted one; though not where they themselves were concerned. She had not the same faith in their excuses as she seemed to put in this patent deception attempted by “the French girl,” who was a likely one to get into trouble by going to church surely. The kitchen and all its dependencies laughed the idea to scorn, though, perhaps, respecting Innocent more for the cleverness and invention she had displayed in finding out such an excuse. But the story was laid up against her, with a fulness of detail and circumstance such as might have made an historian despair. How she followed Frederick to his dinner-party, and watched him through the window, and went after him to the club, was all known to the housemaid as particularly as if she had been there.
“And I hope he’ll reward her, when he’s free and can please hisself,” said Jane in the kitchen, who was romantic.
“Get along with you,” cried the cook. “Do you think gentlemen care for a chit like that?”