"A mother must know the kind that will suit her boay best. But it's a sore responsibeelity, my dears. It would be terrible if the expurriment didn't answer; and he's very hard to please, and terrible fond of his own way."
"Couldn't you say a good word for one of us here, dear Mrs Wilkie?" asked Lettice with her most winning smile. "Just see what a lot of us there are!--and we have all to find husbands yet: every variety of girl you can think of--tall and short, dark and fair. Surely one of us might answer. It would be a gain to all. If one were provided for, the chance would be better, by so much, for all the rest when the next parti came along."
"Peter must have intelleck, he says, and high culture. I'm fear'd ye wouldn't just answer, my dear--though you're a nice girl, I'll allow, and--well--and comely."
Lettice coloured to the temples, and her well-arched eyebrows contracted into something approaching to a frown. It is eminently provoking, when one fancies one has been rather successful in drawing out an oddity, and making sport, to find the tables suddenly turned, and one's self made the butt.
"I was not thinking of myself," she said, and there was a tremor of crossness in her voice, which made her discomfiture more amusingly evident to the rest--"or any one else, for that matter. I know I would not take a gift of the fellow, with his washy grey eyes, and stiff priggish pomposity."
"The grapes are sour, my dear. Did you never hear tell of the story of the fox? But never you mind. There's a man appinted for you, I make no doubt; and if there is, ye'll get him, for as long as he is about appearing."
There was a scream of laughter, and Lettice, too angry to trust her voice with a retort, turned on her heel and went out, while the old lady sniffed vindictively and pursed her lips, as if she could have said much more, had the offender allowed her time.
"The impident monkey!" she muttered at last. "Does she think she is to make sport of me, without getting as good as she gives?" "That's a forward girl," she added aloud. "It isn't becoming for a young woman to be putting in for a gentleman in that barefaced way. And ye needn't laugh, my dears; some of you are not much better. As for Mis-ter Wilkie, ye may keep your minds easy; he can get better than any of you where we come from, just for the raising of his finger."
"Poor Lettice!" said Rose. "Are you not a little hard on her? I am sure she did not mean to be provoking."
"If you say that, my dear, I am willing to suppose it. But really, I'm just bothered with young girrls trying to catch my son, every place I go. It's like the way bees come bizzing round a sugar-bowl; or wasps, I might say," and she flung an angry glance at Lucy Naylor, caught laughing again. "You are the young lady, if I'm not mistaken, that saved the man's life this morning? It was a noble ack; and you're an example to us women, that are more given to hang about a man till he sinks, than to bear him up when he's in trouble. You'll be staying here, like the rest of us?"