"A store," continued the Doctor, "is the rudest, most uncouth kind of shop; and Beauchamp was not fit to keep it, he had to turn it over to his wife, who was thankful to serve shepherds and bush-rangers for aught I know. She lost one child in the bush, God help her! The little thing wandered away and was never heard of again; and her other child, a boy, who grew up, did not turn out well. I tell you, I never like to think or speak of the mother."
"Poor Aunt Penny!" said Mrs. Millar hastily. "But there is one thing"—with a sudden accent of triumph in the perception that she had the advantage of her husband at last—"your Aunt Penny married the man she cared for; she got her choice, and in that light she had no reason to complain, though she had to abide by it."
The Doctor was a little taken aback. "I do not know that she complained—at least her people at home heard nothing of it. And you must do me the justice of owning that I have done nothing to force Dora's inclinations. Indeed, I am not clear that I have done my duty. I ought to have reasoned with the girl. Robinson is not only a good man, he is also a gentleman, every inch of him, so was his father before him."
"In the choice of Jenny Coppock, of Coppock's Farm, for a wife!" exclaimed Mrs. Millar, still rebellious, even satirical and disdainful.
"He was entitled to choose whom he would, I suppose, so long as she was an honest woman, and Jenny Coppock was that quite as much as her husband was a gentleman. She made him happy, I believe, strange as it may sound to some people, as ladies do not always make their husbands happy—you know I mean nothing personal, Maria. Whether she was quite happy herself is a different question, of which I have had no means of judging. But I have heard you yourself say that she never presumed on her rise in rank, or sought to thrust her comely, kindly face where it was not wanted. Her son has a look of her, without her good looks. Poor Mrs. Robinson! I was with her in her first and last illness, as you are aware, and a more courageous, self-forgetful soul I had never the privilege to attend."
Mrs. Millar turned back in the conversation, and took to dogmatizing. "People who are well-informed and well-bred will never descend to a lower level without great discomfort and serious loss. I for one, though I have not profited by the advantages the girls have commanded, and I daresay have not their brains"—she made the frank admission with womanly, motherly humility—"though I could not to save my life make one of Rose's beautiful water-colour sketches, or read Greek and Latin like 'little May,' or even talk to the point on every subject under the sun like Annie, still I should not be happy if I had to keep company with Wilkins the butcher's or Ord the baker's wife, and they would not be happy either. It would not matter, in one sense, though I knew they were respectable, worthy women, and were ever so much better off as to money than I. That would not keep me from feeling thoroughly out of place and having hardly an idea in common with my neighbours in their plush-trimmed gowns and fur-lined mantles. I could not stand such degradation for my girls," she protested, with rising agitation. "I had far rather that they and I should be the poorest ladies in the land, should have to pinch and deny ourselves all round."
"It is little you know of it," muttered Dr. Millar, shaking his white head, and pensively contemplating his finger-nails.
"While we still retained the position to which we were born, and the associations among which we were reared," ended Mrs. Millar, with a gasp.
"Bless the woman, what does she mean?" cried Dr. Millar after his lively fashion, with an air of injured innocence. "Does she pretend that Tom Robinson has not been educated—stamped, for that matter, with the last university brand, to which he does credit, I must say? Stay, there goes the night-bell. I am wanted for somebody."
"You'll never go out again to-night, Jonathan," pleaded Mrs. Millar, "after all your worry, when you have not had more than a couple of hours' rest." She was already reproaching herself keenly for having contradicted and argued with him. She had never been able to comprehend, for her comfort, that to a man like him an argument is both rousing and refreshing. In the middle of her remorse she instinctively held up her head, and balanced her cap as a Dutchwoman of the last century balanced her milk-pail, or a girl of the Roman Campagna her sheaf of grass and wild flowers. "It is a shame," she reflected indignantly; "it is very likely nothing of any consequence, just one of those inconsiderate people who think that a professional man ought to be always at their beck and call."