‘I am very surprised that you should ask me; and now I feel sure there must be something in it,’ Mrs. Jenkinson cried.
‘That she was a schoolmistress, or something of that sort? I always suspected as much. The mother was a governess—and if Hayward left her, as he seems to have done, with poor relations—and what then, my dear?’ said the Canon briskly. ‘Eh? that doesn’t alter the fact that she’s a very nice girl.’
‘It alters the situation,’ said the Canon’s wife. ‘Miss Beachey is a very nice girl; but I should not ask her to meet the St. Clairs, for example, in my drawing-room.’
‘Empty-headed noodles,’ said the Canon. ‘Miss Beachey is worth the whole bundle of them; but I hope you don’t compare Miss Beachey with Joyce.’
‘If that were all!’ said the lady, shaking her head. ‘I hear now that’s not half. They say she’s nothing to the Haywards at all—only a girl that took their fancy, and that they took out of her natural position——’
‘I’ll swear she never took Mrs. Hayward’s fancy, Charlotte!’
‘Well, well. Mrs. Hayward is a woman of sense; she knows it is vain to go against a man when he has taken a notion in his head. The Colonel saw her, it appears, and thought her like his first wife. These romantic plans never succeed. It appears she was engaged to a man in her own class, and he has been here making a disturbance. I am very distressed for these poor people. Well? You know all about it, of course, a great deal better than I do.’
‘My dear, I think that notion of yours about a telephone is quite just. Of course I have heard it all—first, that she had been a schoolmarm, as these troublesome Americans say (we’ll all find ourselves speaking American one of these days), then a board schoolmistress, additional horror! Yesterday, however, nobody had any doubt she was old Hayward’s daughter. The other thing has come up to-day. I don’t believe a word of it, if that’s any satisfaction to you.’
‘It is very little satisfaction to me, Canon,’ said Mrs. Jenkinson, shaking her head, ‘for I know how you are swayed by your feelings. You like her, therefore nothing that tells against her can be true. But unfortunately I can’t give up my judgment in that way.’
‘What has your judgment got to do with it? That’s a big thing to be put in movement for such a small matter,’ said the Canon, pushing his chair from the table. The rotundity of the vast black-silk waistcoat burst forth from under that shadow with an imposing air. He crossed one leg over the other, filling half the vacant space with a neat foot in a black gaiter and well-brushed shoe.