'I was late—I could not get away earlier.'
'And I am grateful to be able to walk back with you. You will allow me to take your arm. I am still shaken with my temporary faintness. I have, I fear, been overdone. I have had so much to try me of late. But when the bell rang, I was drawn towards the sacred building. Upon my word, I thought it was a saint's day, and it was a duty as well as a pleasure to be there. I am so glad I went; and now I am able to walk back with you, and after public worship—though the congregation was rather thin—the mind is turned to devotion, and the thoughts are framed, are, in fact, just what they ought to be, you know. I have wanted for some time to speak to you, and tell you how grieved I was that I was forced to give your mother notice to leave. I had no thought of being inconsiderate and unkind.'
'I am aware of that,' answered Salome quietly. 'Mr. Philip Pennycomequick has already told mamma that the notice was a mere formality. The explanation was a relief to us, as mamma was somewhat hurt. She had tried to do her best for dear Mr. Pennycomequick.'
'You will have to induce her to forgive me. What is religion for, and churches built, and organs, and hot-water apparatus, and all that sort of thing, but to cultivate in us the forgiving spirit. I am, myself, the most placable person in the world, and after singing such a hymn as that in which I have just joined, I could forgive Susan if she dropped the silver spoons on the floor and dinted them.'
No one would have been more astonished than Mrs. Sidebottom if told that she was artificial, that she affected interests, sympathies, to which she was strange. At the time that she talked she felt what she said, but the feeling followed the expression, did not originate it.
'My dear Miss Cusworth,' she went on, 'I am not one to bear a grudge. I never could. When my poor Sidebottom was alive, if there had been any unpleasantness between us during the day—and all married people have their tiffs—when you are married you will have tiffs. As I was saying, if there had been any unpleasantness between us, I have shaken him at night to wake him up, that he might receive my pardon for an incivility said or done.'
'We had made our preparations to leave Mergatroyd,' said Salome, 'but my mother has been ill again, and my poor sister has heard of the death of her husband, who fell in a skirmish with the Germans. So when Mr. Philip Pennycomequick was so kind as to ask my mother to remain on in the house, in the same capacity as heretofore, we were too thankful——'
'What! You stay?'
'Yes, my mother is not in a condition to move just now, and my sister is broken down with grief. But, of course, this is only a temporary arrangement.'
Mrs. Sidebottom said nothing for a moment. Presently, however, she observed: 'No doubt this is best, and I am very, very pleased to hear it. Philip did not mention it—I mean Mr. Pennycomequick. I must not any longer call him Philip, as he is now head of the family, unless the captain be regarded also as a head, then the family will be like the Austrian eagle—one body with two heads. But, my dear Miss Cusworth, tell me, did Mr. Pennycomequick say some foolish nonsense about three or four thousand pounds?'