But Mrs. Walsh did not on this or any other occasion appeal to Squire Trevor. She was too stout-hearted a woman to call in, without reluctance, foreign aid in her battles. She might have shaken hands with worldly honour, but she had an honour of her own—she contented herself with confiding to her own husband that she “mistrusted” that young Lady Bell Trevor was either clean crazy, or on the high road to ruin.
Perhaps it came to the same thing in the end, for, acting on her convictions, Mrs. Walsh took it upon herself, in what she believed the interest of religion, virtue, and family regard, to watch and guard the unfortunate young woman, and in this Mrs. Walsh was warmly abetted by Squire Trevor, who was growing every day more jealous of and carping to his wife.
When Mrs. Walsh could not discharge her office in person, she did it in deputy by her eldest daughter. Young Sally Walsh, brought up under the hardest discipline, in her homespun linen and woollen, and barndoor buxomness, had been considerably dazzled to begin with, by the elegant apparition of Lady Bell, but having been smartly chidden by her mother for her short-sighted worldliness, she fell straightway into the opposite error.
Sally was not only forward and intrusive in her bearing towards Lady Bell, whom Sally’s mother had in such small esteem, but, from learning to entertain a poor opinion of the strange, foolish young fine lady, and her distempered state of mind, Sally proceeded, without meaning much harm—on the whole meaning good, to despise Lady Bell and to trample upon her figuratively.
Lady Bell had spirit to keep her own ground and resist being trampled on, but it was a proud, delicate spirit, and was at a discount in a contest with ruder, stronger spirits.
“I’ll go up to the Court and sit with Lady Bell,” Sally Walsh would propose, dangling her hat by its ribands, and squaring the mottled elbows which her mits left exposed. “I don’t mind though she is as mum as a mouse and as glum as an owl, I’ll keep her from going melancholy mad;” and then the young girl would say, not for a moment concealing that she looked for some benefit to herself in the benefit conferred on another, “Lady Bell may let me take the shape of a habit shirt,” or “the peaches are prime ripe in the Court gardens.”
Mrs. Walsh bade her daughter not hanker after the follies of dress, or the flesh-pots of Egypt, but she did not think the hankering in this case very unnatural or unreasonable.
“What do you think I found my lady doing?” Sally would report faithfully to her mother on her return; “Carving cherry-stones! I told her she would blind herself; but, of course, she whittled away. The Squire’s list shoes were worn out, and I said I should make him a new pair, and he said, there was a wench of some use in the world!”
“Then be thankful, child, and don’t learn bragging from poor silly Lady Bell.”
“She didn’t know how to make list shoes, mother, but she looked at me after I had the list from Tofts; she is quick, Lady Bell, for, as dandily as she is, she picked up the making in no time. There,” she said, “you can hear her, mother, in her low mincing tones, ‘now I can show Tofts how to supply Mr. Trevor with list shoes in future, you need not trouble to make any more, Miss Walsh;’ these were all the thanks I had.”