“Lord bless us!” said Mrs. Welting. She was really alarmed. She gave a glance round upon her girls, all bursting with self-defence, and made them a sign to be silent. Then she turned to her visitor with a mixture of anxiety and defiance. “Speak up, Polly,” she said; “nobody shall say as I won’t listen, if there’s anything against my girls; but speak up, for you’ve gone too far to stop now.”
“How hot it is, to be sure!” said Mrs. Despard, “in this close bit of a place. I wish someone would open a window. I can’t think how I could have put up with it so long. And I wonder what my ’usband would say if he heard me spoke to like that? I thought you would have the sense to understand that I’ve come here for your good. It wasn’t to put myself on an equality with folks like you, working for your living. I don’t want to be stuck up, but a lady must draw the line somewhere. Mrs. Welting, I don’t suppose you know it—you ain’t often in the workroom—it would be a deal better if you was. There’s gentlemen comes here, till the place is known all over the town; and there is one young gentleman as I take a deal of interest in as makes me and his papa very uneasy all along of coming here——”
“Gentlemen! coming here!” cried Mrs. Welting, looking round upon her daughters with mingled anger and dismay.
“I know what I’m talking about,” said Polly; “let them contradict me if they dare. He comes here mostly every day. One of the girls is that silly as to think he’s after her. After her! I hope as he has more sense; he knows what’s what a deal too well for that. He takes his fun out of them—that is what he does. But you may think yourself what kind of feelings his family has—the Captain and me. That’s the one that encourages him most,” Mrs. Despard added, pointing out Emma with her finger. “She is always enticing the poor boy to come here.”
“Oh, you dreadful, false, wicked story!” cried Emma, flushed and crying. “Oh, mother, it ain’t nothing of the kind! It was she as brought him first. She didn’t mind who came when she was here. She said it was no harm, it was only a bit of fun. We was always against it—at least Ellen was,” added the culprit, bursting forth into sobs and tears.
“Yes, I always was,” said Ellen, demurely—it was not in human nature not to claim the palm of superior virtue—“but it was not Emma, it was Polly that began. I’ve heard her argue as it was no harm. She was the first with the Captain, and then when young Mr. Despard——”
“I am not going to sit here, and listen to abuse of my family,” said Polly, rising. “I wouldn’t have mentioned no names, for I can’t abide to have one as belongs to me made a talk about in a place like this. I came to give you a warning, ma’am, not these hardened things. It isn’t for nothing a lady in my position comes down to the River Lane. I’ve got my beautiful silk all in a muddle, and blacks upon a white bonnet is ruination. I did it for your sake, Mrs. Welting, for I’ve always had a respect for you. And now I’ve done my Christian duty,” said Polly, with vehemence, shaking the dust from her blue silk. “There’s them that talk about it, like that little Methody Ellen, but there ain’t many that do it. But don’t let anybody suppose,” she cried, growing hotter and hotter, “that I mean to do it any more! If you let him come here after this, I won’t show you any mercy—we’ll have the law of you, my ’usband and I. There’s laws against artful girls as entice poor innocent young men. Don’t you go for to think,” cried Mrs. Despard, sweeping out while they all gazed after her, speechless, “because I’ve once done my Christian duty that I’m going to do it any more!”
We will not attempt to describe the commotion that followed—the reproaches, the tears, the fury of the girls betrayed, of which none was more hot than that of Ellen, who had to stand and hear herself called a Methody—she who was conscious of being an Anglican and a Catholic without blemish, and capable of anything in the world before Dissent.
Polly sailed up the hill, triumphant in that consciousness of having done her duty as a Christian, but equally determined not to do it any more; and what with the consciousness of this noble performance, and what with the sealskin, found it in her power to be almost agreeable to her step-daughter, when the Captain, who, after all, was Lottie’s father, and did not like the idea that his girl should be banished from his house, had met her and brought her in.
“She has not had the careful bringing-up that you have had, my child,” the Captain said. “She hasn’t had your advantages. You must have a little patience with her, for my sake.” Captain Despard had always been irresistible when he asked tenderly, with his head on one side, and an insinuating roll in his voice, that anything should be done for his sake.