Miss Chatterton was in high feather, and went from house to house lauding Mr. Mitchelson's liberality, kindness, and social qualities.
"You find him a delightful neighbour, my dears, do you not?" she asked of Katie and Elsie. "Charmingly unaffected, and instead of giving himself airs or assuming the grand seigneur over Rathbury people, ready to take a hint from anybody. I should think he listened patiently for half an hour this morning whilst I enlightened him as to the want of thrift in that one family."
I fear the two girls' conduct cannot be excused, but, dreading a recapitulation of the said half-hour's talk, with additions and variations, ad lib, they made some inaudible excuse, which even Miss Chatterton's quick ear failed to catch, and hurried away.
Miss Chatterton's face was not quite pleasant to behold as she looked after the retreating figures. "No time to bestow upon an old woman now. I used to think them models of simplicity and good manners, and amongst the few of the chits of to-day who could treat their elders with proper respect. Never mind. We shall see."
As she finished this mental confabulation, Miss Chatterton turned her steps in an opposite direction to that in which the girls had gone, and, nodding her head sagaciously, went her way.
In olden days, the owners of Rathlands had been accustomed to encourage their humble neighbours in their attempts at window gardening, and offered prizes for the best flowers, as well as for vegetables and fruit. Mr. Mitchelson had returned too late for this little show to be held at the usual time, but it was arranged that on the fifteenth of September there was to be an exhibition of the kind. The local gentry would take part in it. The show would be revived, and another year they hoped it would be made a greater success.
Whatever might be lacking in the articles exhibited on this occasion would be made up, it was hoped, by certain festivities which were to accompany it. A special entertainment, a kind of house-warming, was to take place, and guests of every degree to be hospitably entertained in accordance with their several positions.
"And it is good of him to do all this," said Miss Chatterton to everybody. "Mr. Mitchelson is so delightfully ready to profit by, and act upon, a hint from a neighbour."
If Rathbury folk had not known Miss Chatterton, they might have been deluded into thinking that to some judicious hint of hers the approaching festivities were all owing, and that she was at the helm of Rathlands' affairs, turning its master wheresoever she listed. Whatever they might believe, there is no doubt she thought she possessed great influence, because Mr. Mitchelson Was too polite to run away when she had actually compelled his attention in the first instance; but, like other Rathbury folk, he soon acquired preternatural sharp-sightedness, and when Miss Chatterton appeared in the distance, he disappeared, with all possible rapidity, in the opposite direction. And, like everybody else in Rathbury, Mr. Mitchelson felt not a little thankful that, however sharp-sighted the elderly spinster might be in some respects, Nature had rendered her physically unable to see far beyond the tip of her very aquiline and aristocratic nose.
Few people, however, judged that Miss Chatterton had any malice in her composition. She was generally regarded as being a little too much inclined to pry into her neighbours' affairs, and to repeat what concerned them with unnecessary freedom; a little too ready to lecture the poor, even while relieving them; and forgetful that a cottage and a palace are equally the castle of the English man and woman abiding therein.