“I am not going to hear anyone talk disrespectful of my girl,” she said. “She is as good a girl as ever breathed. I wish Sir John, or the Queen herself, may have as good, and that ain’t a bad wish, Mr. Durant. She is one that would do credit to any family, though I say it that shouldn’t. She’s pretty and she’s good, and knows her duty a deal better than most. Them that find fault with my Nancy, it’s because they don’t know what she is. Me and her father could tell them a different story. She never was one to go after pleasure like the other two.”
“Mamma!” said Matilda and Sarah Jane in a breath.
“Oh yes! I know what I am saying. You are good girls enough, but you’re not like your sister. You were always the troublesome ones. You’d talk and laugh with anybody. You have got no proper pride. But Nancy has always kept herself to herself. However she got to be so fond of Arthur, I never could make out, for she was not one to take up with strangers; and never had any affair of the sort, nor so much as kept company with a gentleman in all her days, till she met with Arthur. Oh! my Nancy is a very uncommon girl, Mr. Durant. There are very few like her.”
“I am quite ready to believe it,” said Durant, proceeding on his remorseless career, though compunctions pricked him for what he was doing. “But Sir John does not know Miss Nancy. And there is Lady Curtis to be taken into consideration.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Bates, subdued for the moment, “I don’t deny a lady may have prejudices. I know by myself—that time when Charley was supposed to be paying attention to—you remember, girls?—oh yes! a mother is to be considered. But still—we have no reason to think Lady Curtis is disagreeable, Mr. Durant, or will not hear reason. The time I am talking of, about Charley—I took my measures. I got a friend of mine to speak to the girl; and I met her myself—by accident like; and, I am glad to say, it all came to nothing,” Mrs. Bates added with a sigh of relief.
“Then you perceive,” said Durant, “that you felt exactly as Lady Curtis may be expected to feel.”
“Yes—mothers is the same everywhere, I suppose,” said Mrs. Bates, not without complacence. “A little more money don’t make much difference, Mr. Durant. If it was the Queen, a mother can’t be more than a mother. And we’re all alike, never out of anxiety one way or other—thinking of our children—a deal more than our children ever think of us,” she added, shaking her head at her daughters with a sigh. “But I suppose that’s the way of the world.”
“Let us return to Lady Curtis,” said the Devil’s advocate. “She, you acknowledge, is likely to be prejudiced. You understand that, judging from the feelings with which you heard of Mr. Charley’s entanglement—”
“It never went so far as an entanglement. Dear, no! you must not think it was so serious.”
“But this is very serious, Mrs. Bates. Curtis has settled everything to marry your daughter—so he tells me—and what will Lady Curtis think? She does not know Miss Nancy, nor you. She will think these are some designing people who have caught my son—”