‘No one should attempt these parties,’ said Mrs. Jenkinson, ‘who has not a large place to give them in, and plenty of things going on—tennis and all that, or music, or a beautiful prospect: we have them all here.’
‘Oh,’ said Mrs. Sitwell, ‘we did very well indeed, I assure you, in Wombwell’s field. You did not do me the honour to come, but everybody else did—the Thompsons and all.’
‘Really,’ Mrs. Jenkinson said. She added pointedly, feeling that she was not a match for the lively and nimble person with whom she was engaged— ‘It must, I fear, have been very expensive.’
‘Oh, not at all,’ said the parson’s wife. ‘You see, we gave nothing but tea. People don’t come for what they get, though dear Sir Sam thinks so; they come to see other people, and meet their friends, and spend the afternoon pleasantly. Don’t you think so, dear Mrs. Jenkinson? If I had the smallest little place of my own, with a little bit of a garden, such as we might have if there ever is a parsonage to St. Augustine’s, I should not be at all afraid to ask even the Duchess to tea. She would come for me, she is such a dear,’ Mrs. Sitwell said.
‘I am afraid I am not half so courageous,’ the Canon’s wife replied; and she added quickly, ‘There is Lady St. Clair; excuse me, I must say a word to her,’ and hastened away. She was routed, horse and foot; for Mrs. Jenkinson did not know the Duchess, and this little district incumbent, this nobody, this scheming, all-daring little woman, actually did, by some freak of fortune,—and probably would have the audacity—and succeed in it, as such sort of persons so often do—to ask that great lady to tea.
The Canon swooped down upon Joyce after this little scene was over. She was standing by herself, only half-seeing the fun, perhaps because her sense of humour was faint, perhaps only because of her vague understanding of all that lay underneath, and made it funny. He took her hand and drew it within his arm. ‘Here you are, you little rebel,’ he said. ‘I have got you at last. There is nobody eligible within sight. Come and take a walk with me.’
Joyce had very little idea what he meant by some one eligible; but she was very well content to be led away, hurrying her own steps to suit the swinging gait of the big Churchman. He led her through the green alleys and broad walks of the soap-boiler’s magnificent grounds to the mount of vision which crowned them. ‘There now! look at that view,’ he said, ‘and tell me if you have anything like it in Scotland. You brag us out for scenery, I know; but where did you ever see anything like that?’
Joyce looked up in his face for a moment, then answered, with a smile, ‘I like as well to see the Crags below Arthur’s Seat, and the sea coming in ayont them.’
‘Eh!’ cried the Canon, lifting his brows. ‘What do you mean by that? You don’t generally speak like that.’
With nobody was Joyce so much at her ease as with this big impetuous man. ‘There was once,’ she said, in the tone, half bantering, half reproachful, with which she had once been wont to recall her ‘big’ class to the horror of having forgotten something in Shakespeare, ‘a little Scotswoman whose name was Jeanie Deans.’