Ralph had made money--secured a substantial hunch of the bread of subsistence, and now he was minded to butter it with all the social distinctions and advantages he could attain to. M. Rouget passed up the car before him, preceded by madame and the demoiselle, his daughter. These ladies had not called upon Ralph's wife on her coming to reside in the neighbourhood; but then Martha, as he told himself, though a worthy creature, and one who had made him an excellent wife in his day of small things, was scarcely equal to the promotion which had overtaken her. She was undeniably diffident and undistinguished; perhaps even dowdy, he added with a sigh, as the fresh crisp dresses of the French ladies, befringed, bebugled, and "relieved" with streamers of lace and ribbon, swam on in front of him. He would claim his neighbour's acquaintance, he thought, who doubtless would introduce him to his family; and then he doubted not he should make himself so pleasant that the ladies would re-consider their previous reserve and call on Martha forthwith. Already he saw himself at La Hache, invited to meet Monseigneur the Archbishop and the Honourable the Minister of Drainage and Irrigation, whom after that, if he were but civil, he should feel bound to support at future elections, though hitherto he had voted rouge.
So quick is thought, all this and more had flashed through his mind, illustrated with vignettes of gracious smiling ladies and gesticulating Frenchmen--the prismatic glintings of a snob's beatific vision--and he had not yet reached the middle of the car. M. Rouget was walking on before. Another step and he would overtake him. Already his hand was raised to touch the seignior's arm, when, hsh!--the prod of a parasol point dexterously planted in the small of his back made him start, exclaim, stop, and turn round.
In the corner of a sofa he had passed, a wizened little woman, somewhat dusty and tumbled was smiling, to him from under the frizzes of her false front, wide-mouthedly smiling, till every gold pin in her best set of teeth shone in the slanting sunbeams of the afternoon. She held out a clawlike hand in a cotton glove, by way of welcome, making room on the sofa beside her, and dropping the parasol point, as the wild Indian lays down his tomahawk in sign of amity.
"Judy!" said Ralph in some disgust; but while he spoke he saw the Rouget party seat themselves with some friends, and recognized that the opportunity for his little coup was past, so he recovered himself and dropped into the place so effusively offered.
"And how come you to be here, ma'am? The general car does not seem over-crowded. If the treasurer of the diocesan fund were to see you travelling in parlour cars, he would doubt the need of that augmentation we have been petitioning for."
"It would be just like him if he did. He is mean enough for anything in the way of prying into the private affairs of the rural clergy. I wonder how he would like it himself? Still, there are a few whose goings on he might inquire into more closely. But he has favourites. I wish Synod would make a change."
"But they will say you are a favourite if you travel in this regardlessly extravagant way."
"Let them, if they dare! But there is no fear of that. They cannot but know that on the five hundred dollars of stipend they allow Mr. Bunce, a clergyman's family cannot travel at all, except on foot; and even that takes more shoe leather than they can afford. They understand perfectly well, that, but for my little income, Mr. Bunce could not have afforded to accept the parish of St. Euphrase at all--a fact which is no credit to our church. And I think, Ralph, it would have been more respectful to Mr. Bunce, and kinder to me, if you had not alluded to our pecuniary circumstances. We cannot all be brokers, you must remember."
"Beg pardon, Judy. No offence. And you remind me that I have not yet inquired after the health of my respected uncle," he added with an impertinent laugh. "I hope he is well."
Ralph's acquisition of an uncle on his Aunt Judith's marriage was rather an ancient ground of amusement by this time, for the marriage had taken place years before; but the idea of his maiden aunt created a wife, and the cleric, his junior, transformed into his uncle, was a perennial joke, from which time and familiarity could not rub the point. His other uncle, Gerald, had been one to make a nephew quail; and that this mild, shaven, unwealthy, and, so far, youthful parson should have stepped into the redoubtable title, was inexhaustibly droll. It is notable how long the same quip and jest will serve to tickle the busy man engrossed in material interests; but in this case there was the excuse that the Bunces really were an oddly-assorted pair. A stranger could not but have inquired how they had come to marry each other--she, so mature, he, with his drab-coloured hair and round smooth cheeks. "Cherubical," his bride had called the cheeks to her bridesmaid in a moment of enthusiasm and confidence; but they were too loose and pasty to deserve the title, or if not, the cherub must have been out of health--cloyed with ambrosia perhaps, or too much nectar, in the Elysian Fields.