‘I don’t call it a small matter. I am very surprised that you should think so. A Scotch country girl, with a pupil-teacher’s training, brought among us—presented to us all as a young lady!’
‘Well, wasn’t she a young lady? What fault have you to find with her? She puts me to my p’s and q’s, I can tell you, with what you call her pupil-teacher’s——’ The Canon changed his position impatiently, bringing his other foot into that elevated position. ‘It’s all a horrid nuisance!’ he cried. ‘I don’t know when I’ve been more vexed. Hayward’s an old fool—I always knew it. I wish they had never settled here.’
‘I knew you’d think so, Canon,’ Mrs. Jenkinson cried.
‘What was the good, if you knew I’d think so, of aggravating everything? I’ll tell you what it is,—it’s those pernicious people at St. Augustine’s. That woman must be in mischief. I told you so. She can’t keep out of it. And to fall foul of the people who have been her best friends! But for that poor girl, whom she’s fixing her fangs in, neither old Sam nor I would have moved a step. I’ve a great mind to go and stop the building. It would serve them right.’
‘I don’t defend Dora Sitwell, Canon; but if there had been nothing wrong she could not have made a story. It is the people who shock all the instincts of society and break its rules—as the Haywards have done——’
‘Well, I said he was an old fool,’ said the Canon, getting up and marching about the room, which shook and creaked under him—the windows rattling, the boards bending. ‘I give him up to you—flay him alive, if you like—— Still, at the same time,’ he added, stopping in front of her, with his long coat swinging, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, ‘if a man should happen by any misfortune to find his own child in an inferior position—suppose she had been a housemaid instead of a board schoolmistress—should he have left her there? is that what you ladies think the right thing to do? Respect the delicate breeding of girls who have run about town for two or three seasons, and don’t bring the rustic Una here.’
‘The Una!’ said Mrs. Jenkinson. ‘Canon, when you are very excited, you always become extravagant. Una was a princess, not a schoolmistress. Oh yes, of course, it’s all one in a fairy tale; but a Una, with a lover who comes and makes a disturbance——! And besides, everybody says she’s not their daughter—only a country girl to whom they took a fancy.’
‘A strange fancy on the wife’s part!’
‘I do wish you would be reasonable. The wife, of course, saw the difficulties, poor woman! Very likely she disapproved of all that romantic nonsense, adopting a stranger—if it had been a child even! but a grown-up girl with a lover. It has not been for her happiness either, poor thing. To have been left in her own sphere, and married, as she would naturally have done, would have been far better. I am sorry for her, and I am sorry for Mrs. Hayward. As for him, it is all his fault, and I have no patience with him,’ cried Mrs. Jenkinson. ‘You are quite right, Canon; he is an old fool.’
‘Still, I don’t see, if he had been Solomon, how he was to have left the poor little girl behind him when he had once found her. Do you?’