‘We need not quarrel over that,’ said the curate, as who should say, we have plenty of subjects to quarrel upon, ‘the thing is that she is gone. I was going to say bag and baggage; but that would not be correct, for her boxes are left all fastened up—directed to a distant railway station. She has not even left an address.’
‘How very odd!’ Florence said. And then there was a little pause: there is nothing so dangerous as a pause in certain positions of affairs.
Mr. Osborne stood in front of the window, and when he came to the end of a sentence looked out upon the garden. Florence, except when she was speaking and was obliged to raise her eyes to him now and then, kept them upon her work. She had not asked him to sit down—partly from inadvertence, partly from embarrassment—and both of them cast furtive glances at the gate, longing for somebody to come. Did they long for somebody to come? At last the silence became so very appalling that Florence rushed into it, not knowing what might come of that too eloquent pause.
‘I am to tell papa that there is to be a meeting of the education——’
‘I hope you don’t think I would send my Rector a message like that? That, if he thinks well, there ought, perhaps, to be a meeting—for something must be done at once; the children are all about’—Mr. Osborne added, sinking into a more confidential tone—‘we cannot keep the girls’ school shut.’
‘No,’ said Florence, ‘oh no; do you know of any one? There is Anderson’s wife, the schoolmaster. He wanted her to get it, but now she has the infant school. At the worst, don’t you think for a day or two we ladies, perhaps? If you can’t hear of any one, I could take the reading and spelling, and perhaps the writing. Having the copylines makes that easy, though, of course, I don’t write well enough myself.’
‘You might do it, Miss Plowden; you don’t mind what trouble you put yourself to—’ He had to pull up sharply, or he did not know what he might have said. His voice began to grow rather soft in spite of himself, which was a thing that could not be permitted to be. ‘We might think of Mrs. Anderson,’ he said; ‘as for the other ladies, I don’t think it would do. It is useless trusting to amateurs.’
‘Yes,’ said Florence, with humility. ‘I never thought, of course, that I could be much good, or any of us, only for a stop-gap for the moment. Mrs. Anderson would be the most hopeful thing, perhaps.’
‘I did not mean to imply that you would be no good. Quite the reverse. I meant——’
‘Oh! I know, I know, Mr. Osborne,’ said Florry. ‘We need not stand upon compliments; we are only trying to think what’s best for the children.’