While these things were pending, I went one day to the north side of Edam Water to call upon Ada Winter. I had known Ada at school—not in the same class or term, of course, but just because we came from the same place we nodded, if we were not in too great a hurry, when we crossed each other in the playground.
It was not much, but I have noticed that you get more fond of school after you have left it a while. Before, it was "the beastly hole," "Treadmill House," and other pretty little innocent names. Immediately after leaving school, however, it became "the dear old place," a little walled Paradise; and we used to go regularly to the station to see the girls who were still there going off "with smiling faces veiling sad hearts," as Hugh John said—and, of course, as I know now, wishing us all at Jericho.
At any rate I called upon Ada Winter, and among other things we talked about the choir practice at our church, and I asked Ada why she did not go. You see, she had been with me in the school choir, where, as in most choirs, they put the pretty girls in front. (No, I shan't tell where I sat, not I!)
"Why," said Ada, with an inflection which would have been bitter but for its sadness, "why I can't go to choir practice is not because I have lost my voice, as mother tells everybody. But because mother wants to go herself! Some one has got to stay at home."
"But Mrs. Winter—but your mother," I began, "she does not——"
"I know—I know—you need not repeat it," cried Ada, feeling for her handkerchief in a quick, nervous way she always had. "Mother cannot sing a note, and every one there makes fun of the way she dresses! Oh, don't I know!"
And she dabbed at her eyes, while I tried to think of something to say—something that obstinately kept away. I wanted to comfort her, you see, but you have no idea till you have tried how difficult it is to comfort (or even to answer) a girl who talks about her mother like that.
Of course I knew very well that it was all true. Mrs. Winter's youthful toilettes and girlish airs were the talk of the "visiting" good wives of Edam—and very respectable and noticing women these were, even beyond the average of a Scottish "neighborhood"—half village, half town—which is, they say, the highest in the world.
The men thought Mrs. Winter merely "nice looking." A few found her even "nice," and mentioned the fact at home! (Poor ignorant wretches, they deserved what they got!) Was it not evident to every woman (with eyes) in the congregation that Mrs. Winter was obviously, and with malice aforethought, setting her cap at the Reverend Cosmo Huntly, the newly-elected minister of the parish kirk in Edam?
No matter! I had been brought up in the ancient way, and (at least knowingly) I had not forsaken it.