“Glad to see you, Mrs. Gurridge. No, I haven’t forgotten you,” the man replied.
A slight pause followed. The women-folk had so much to say that they hardly knew where to begin. That trifling hesitation might have been accounted for by this fact. Or it might have been that Hervey was less overjoyed at his home-coming than were his mother and sister.
Prudence was the first to speak.
“Funny that I should have set a place more than I intended at the tea-table,” she said, “and funnier still that when I found out what I’d done I didn’t remove the plate and things. And now you turn up.” She laughed joyously.
Sarah Gurridge looked over in the girl’s direction and shook an admonitory forefinger at her.
“Mr. Grey, my dear––you were thinking of Mr. Grey, in spite of your lover’s tiff.”
“Who did you say?” asked Hervey, with a quick glance at Prudence.
“Leslie Grey,” said his mother, before the old school-ma’am could reply. “Didn’t our Prudence tell you when she wrote? He’s the man she’s going to 72 marry. I must say he’s not the man I should have set on for her; but she’s got her own ploughing to seed, and I’m not the one to say her ‘nay’ when she chooses her man.”
Hervey busied himself with his food, nor did he look up when he spoke.
“That was Grey, I s’pose, I saw riding away as I came up? Good, square-set chunk of a man.”