‘Well, she says she likes us best,’ said the Canon, quite irrelevantly; ‘so it’s not from partiality, or taking their side.’
‘Oh!’ cried Mrs. Jenkinson, darting a glance of anger mingled with a certain respect at the girl, whom she immediately set down as a foeman worthy of her steel.
‘She says they’re very hard-working people, working at their district night and day. She doesn’t understand their ways (she’s Scotch, you know), but she sees they mean the best by their people—hush for a moment, my dear. And she says that they think they were promised a parsonage, and that this makes a sense of wrong. Well, you know, she’s about right there—they were promised a——’
‘Before any one knew what they were—before we understood all the schemes and designs—the setting up to be something altogether above—the ridiculous fuss about everything—the flowers and the lights and the surpliced choir, and Bach’s music, with little Johnny Cosham to sing the soprano parts—if she doesn’t do it herself, as I verily believe she does, done up in a surplice and put at the end of the row: such a thing as was never heard of!’
‘Well, my dear—well, my dear! Joyce here’, patting her hand, ‘who has no sympathy with all that (being Scotch, you know), says they mean it all well, to get people to go to church. And they do get a number of that hopeless lot down by the river to go. But, however, that’s not the question; they were promised a parsonage if they got on and stayed a year or two. I can’t say but what that’s quite true.’
The Canon looked at Sir Samuel, and Sir Sam looked at the Canon. The rich man’s countenance fell a little in harmony with that of his oracle, and he replied subdued, ‘I don’t say neither but what it’s true.’
‘She says it makes a sense of wrong: well, perhaps it does make a sense of wrong. We have very nice houses, Sir Samuel,—mine naturally not magnificent like yours, but on the whole a nice, comfortable, old-fashioned place.’
‘Oh, very nice,’ sighed Lady Thompson, who till now had been recovering herself, and had just got back her voice; ‘nicer than this, Canon, if you were to ask me.’
There was a pause, and the two pairs looked at each other, a little conscious, pleased with their own good fortune, feeling perhaps a little prick of conscience—at all events aware that a moral was about to be drawn.
‘Well, and what then?’ Mrs. Jenkinson said at last, in her highest pitch of voice.