“You go in for afternoon tea, I see,” said her sister, with the faintest touch of sarcasm in her voice. “Quite fashionable.” She put her cup to her lips, and drank off its contents at one gulp, as she spoke, as a sort of protest.
“Yes, I like it. I think it’s a pretty fashion. Why shouldn’t I have it, if I want to? Of course ’Enry says it’s a ‘lot of tomfoolery,’ but that don’t matter to me.”
Mrs. Ruan occasionally dropped an h, but her voice was clear and musical like her daughter’s.
“Besides, with Bridget coming home and all, I want to have things nice for her. She’ll look for it.”
“When do you expect ’er?”
“In about an hour,” Mrs. Ruan said, glancing at the clock, her face brightening. “There! I ’ave been looking forward to her coming home. I’ve missed ’er dreadfully,—that I ’ave; but of course I had to think of her education. ’Enry was always against this school, you know,—grumbled at the expense an’ all; but I was determined she should go and have good schooling.”
Mrs. Wainright grunted a little.
“I don’t know that ’Enry wasn’t right,” she said. “I always thought it was a mistake myself.”
“A mistake,” her sister echoed indignantly. Her face flushed. “But there, Jinny, you never did have a spark of ambition for your children. Now, I have, and it’s harder for me than for you, p’rhaps,” she added wistfully. “Of course I wouldn’t own it to any one else, but a sister’s different. There’s no doubt about it, a public house is looked down on. It’s a fine paying thing, of course, an’ I can’t say a word against it; that’s where all the bread and butter has come from. But people don’t like it. And if I hadn’t always ’eld my head up, we should never have known the people we do. We should have had to be content with the Browns—you know—that greengrocer lot, and the Witleys—the tobacconists, and that kind. But I never would know them, and now we do go to the Jenkinses sometimes, and the Wilbys, and the Walkers. Not that, between you and me, I think the Jenkinses are any superior to us. Old Jenkins isn’t a bit refined, to my taste, but they’ve got a nice genteel business, and they’re well thought of in the town, and of course that makes a difference.”
“Well, you know your own affairs, I s’pose,” returned her sister; “but my opinion ain’t altered. The girl will come ’ome with ’er ’ed choke full of ’igh and mighty ideas, an’ you won’t find she’s goin’ to be satisfied with the Jenkinses—nor the Wilbys, for that matter, neither. Unfitting a girl for ’er station in life, I call all this education. My Bessie and Janey shall never ’ave it—I’ll see to that.”