‘It is very kind of him, and very nice of him,’ said Kate.
‘Yes, Miss, it’s kind in meaning, but it don’t do any good. It’s just a way of getting rid of them, the same as sending them off altogether. There ain’t one gentleman in a thousand that understands poor folks. Give them a bit of money, and get quit of them; that’s what young men think; but poor folks want something different. I’ve nothing to say against Greek and Latin; they’re all very fine, I don’t doubt, but they don’t tell you how to manage a parish. You can’t, you know, unless you’ve seen life a bit, and understand folk’s ways, and how things strike them. Turn round, if you please, Miss, till I fit it under the arm. It’s just like as if Miss Ombra there should think she could make a dress, because she can draw a pretty figure. You think you could, Miss?—then just you try, that’s all I have got to say. The gentlemen think like you. They read their books, and they think they understand folk’s hearts, but they don’t, any more than you know how to gore a skirt. Miss Kate, if you don’t keep still, I can’t get on. The scissors will snip you, and it would be a thousand pities to snip such a nice white neck. Now turn round, please, and show the ladies. There’s something that fits, I’m proud to think. I’ve practised my trade in town and all about; I haven’t taken it out of books. Though you can draw beautiful, Miss Ombra, you couldn’t make a fit like that.’
Miss Richardson resumed, with pins in her mouth, when she had turned Kate round and round, ‘There’s nobody I pity in all the world, ma’am, as I pity those young gentlemen. They’re very nice, as a rule; they speak civil, and don’t give more trouble than they can help. Toss their boots about the room, and smoke their cigars, and make a mess—that’s to be looked for; but civil and nice-spoken, and don’t give trouble when they think of it. But, bless your heart, if I had plenty to live on, and no work to do but to look out of my window and take walks, and smoke my cigar, I’d kill myself, that’s what I’d do! Well, there’s the schools and things; but he can’t be poking among the babies more than half an hour or so now and then; and I ask you, ladies, as folks with some sense, what is that young gentleman to do in a mothers’ meeting? No, ma’am, ask him to tea if you’d be his friend, and give him a little interest in his life. They didn’t ought to send young gentlemen like that into small country parishes. And if he falls in love with one of your young ladies, ma’am, none the worse.’
‘But suppose my young ladies would have nothing to say to him?’ said Mrs. Anderson, smiling upon her child, for whom, surely, she might expect a higher fate. As for Kate, the heiress, the prize, such a thing was not to be thought of. But Kate was only a child; she did not occur to the mother, who even in her heiress-ship saw nothing which could counterbalance the superior attractions of Ombra.
Miss Richardson took the pins out of her mouth, and turned Kate round again, and nodded half a dozen times in succession her knowing head.
‘Never mind, ma’am,’ she said, ‘never mind—none the worse, say I. Them young gentlemen ought to learn that they can’t have the first they fancy. Does ’em good. Men are all a deal too confident now-a-days—though I’ve seen the time! But just you ask him to tea, ma’am, if you’d stand his friend, and leave it to the young ladies to rouse him up. Better folks than him has had their hearts broken, and done ’em good!’
It was not with these bloodthirsty intentions that Mrs. Anderson adopted the dressmaker’s advice; but, notwithstanding, it came about that Mr. Sugden was asked a great many times to tea. He began to grow familiar about the house, as the Berties had been; to have his corner, where he always sat; to escort them in their walks. And it cannot be denied that this mild addition to the interests of life roused him much more than the almshouses and the infant schools. He wrote home, to his paternal house in the Fens, that he was beginning, now he knew it better, as his mother had prophesied, to take a great deal more interest in the parish; that there were some nice people in it, and that it was a privilege, after all, to live in such a lovely spot! This was the greatest relief to the mind of his mother, who was afraid, at the first, that the boy was not happy. ‘Thank heaven, he has found out now that a life devoted to the service of his Maker is a happy life!’ that pious woman said, in the fulness of her heart; not knowing, alas! that it was devotion to Ombra which had brightened his heavy existence.
He fell in love gradually, before the eyes of the older people, who looked on with more amusement than any graver feeling; and, with a natural malice, everybody urged it on—from Kate, who gave up her seat by her cousin’s to the Curate, up to Mr. Eldridge himself, who would praise Ombra’s beauty, and applaud her cleverness with a twinkle in his eye, till the gratified young man felt ready to go through fire and water for his chief. The only spectators who were serious in the contemplation of this little tragi-comedy were Mrs. Anderson and Mrs. Eldridge, of whom one was alarmed, and the other disapproving. Mrs. Anderson uttered little words of warning from time to time, and did all she could to keep the two apart; but then her anxiety was all for her daughter, who perhaps was the sole person in the parish unaware of the fact of Mr. Sugden’s devotion to her. When she had made quite sure of this, I am afraid she was not very solicitous about the Curate’s possible heartbreak. He was a natural victim; it was scarcely likely that he could escape that heartbreak sooner or later, and in the meantime he was happy.
‘What can I do?’ she said to the Rector’s wife. ‘I cannot forbid him my house; and we have never given him any encouragement—in that way. What can I do?’
‘If Ombra does not care for him, I think she is behaving very badly,’ said Mrs. Eldridge. ‘I should speak to her, if I were in your place. I never would allow my Lucy to treat any man so. Of course, if she means to accept him, it is a different matter; but I should certainly speak to Ombra, if I were in your place.’