‘Oh,’ said Joyce, with a low exclamation of fright and horror. The suggestion that she should say ‘dear daddy’ put a final crown upon the extraordinary mission confided to her. But Mrs. Sitwell thought it the most natural thing in the world.
‘Don’t do it when Mrs. Hayward is by, that’s all. Oh, she’s an excellent woman, I know; but it’s always the women, you know, that hold back. But for the women, we should have had the parsonage long ago; they won’t let people be liberal. I often say, if there were no ladies in the parish—oh, what a difference! I shouldn’t be a bit afraid even of the Great Gun himself.’
‘You seem to think that it is women who do everything—especially everything that is bad,’ said Joyce, with a gleam of amusement.
‘And so it is,’ said Mrs. Sitwell, with a sigh. ‘If one could only get hold of the gentlemen by themselves. I should like to be the one woman to make them do all I wanted,’ she continued, with a laugh. She was the product of a very advanced civilisation, much beyond anything which her untrained companion knew.
CHAPTER XXVI
Joyce, being so untrained, had, however, but a poor account to give of her intercession. The Colonel could do nothing without Elizabeth, and his promise to consult his wife and see what steps could be taken did not convey much comfort to the parson’s wife. She listened to Joyce’s account of the manner in which she had fulfilled her commission with a lengthening face. At the end she jumped up and gave the girl a kiss which took Joyce very much by surprise. To this inexperienced Scotch peasant-girl the ways of the English were extravagant and full of demonstration, as are to English persons the manners of ‘foreigners’ in general, both being disposed to believe that to show so much was rather an indication that there was little feeling to show.
‘I am sure you meant it as well as possible,’ she said, ‘but you should have seized an opportunity and spoken to the dear Colonel when there was nobody there. Oh, I am sure you are as good as gold—and perhaps if they will really get up a movement—— But I’ve been promised that so often, I have not much faith in it. I thought you might just whisper a word to your dear father, who thinks all the world of you, and the thing would have been done.’ ‘It is the women,’ continued this oracle, ’as I told you before, who hold back. If we had only the men to deal with, it would be much easier to manage. But the women calculate and reckon up, and they say, “It will be a loss of so much on the year’s income;” or “There is so and so I wanted to buy; if I let him give the money away, I shall have to do without it.” That is how they go on. Whereas the men don’t think; they just put their hands in their pockets, and the thing’s done—or it isn’t done,’ she added, with a sudden smile, looking up in Joyce’s face. ‘Never mind,’ she continued, ‘don’t let us make ourselves unhappy about it. Come and see what I am doing.’ She returned to the corner from which she had sprung up on Joyce’s entrance. ‘Come and I’ll show you my workshop, and how I keep the pot boiling,’ she cried.
The room was divided into two, a larger and a smaller portion, with folding-doors, as is usual in such small habitations; but these doors were always open, and Mrs. Sitwell’s corner was at the farther end, commanding the whole space. Joyce saw with amazement a quantity of small photographs ranged upon the ornate but rather shabby little desk at which her friend worked, and which was covered with sheets of paper, each containing a piece of writing and a number. Mrs. Sitwell took up one of the photographs and handed it to Joyce.
‘Now tell me,’ she said, ‘what would you think was the character of that gentleman, supposing that you were going to marry him, or to make him your friend, or to engage him as your butler? What would you think of him from his face?’
‘I think,’ said Joyce, bewildered, ‘that I should not be—very fond of him: but I don’t know why.’