“Oh!” she answered with sarcasm, “I suppose you are looking for the boy. You will not find him, I’m afraid, on the King’s highroad!”
“I was not looking for him,” he answered churlishly.
“More shame to you!” Mrs. Gilson cried, with a spark in her eye. “More shame to you! For you should be!”
He flamed up at that, after the passionate manner of such men when roused. He stopped and faced her, trembling a little.
“And to whom is it a shame,” he cried, “that wicked, foul injustice is done? To whom is it a shame that the innocent are sent to herd with the guilty? To whom is it a shame—woman!—that when there is good, clear evidence put before their eyes, it is not read? Nor used? The boy?” vehemently, “the boy? Is he the only one to be considered, and sought and saved? Is his case worse than hers? I too say shame!”
Mrs. Gilson stared. “Lord save the man!” she cried, as much astonished as if a sheep had turned on her, “with his shames and his whoms! He’s as full of words as a Wensleydale of mites! I don’t know what you are in the pulpit, your reverence, but on foot and in the road, Mr. Brougham was naught to you!”
“He’d not the reason,” the chaplain answered bitterly. And brought down by her remark—for his passion was of the shortest—he turned, and was moving away, morose and despondent, when the landlady called after him a second time, but in a more friendly tone. Perhaps curiosity, perhaps some new perception of the man moved her.
“See here, your reverence,” she said. “If you’ve a mind to show me this fine evidence of yours, I’m not for saying I’ll not read it. Lord knows it’s ill work going about like a hen with an egg she can’t lay. So if you’ve a mind to get it off your mind, I’ll send for my glasses, and be done with it.”
“Will you?” he replied, his face flushing with the hope of making a convert. “Will you? Then there, ma’am, there it is! It’s the letter that villain sent to her to draw her to meet him that night. If you can’t see from that what terms they were on, and that she had no choice but to meet him, I—but read it! Read it!”
She called for her glasses and having placed them on her nose, set the nose at such an angle that she could look down it at the page. This was Mrs. Gilson’s habit when about to read. But when all was arranged her face fell. “Oh dear!” she said, “it’s all bits and scraps, like a broken curd! Lord save the man, I can’t read this. I canna make top nor tail of it! Here, let me take it inside. Truth is, I’m no scholar in the open air.”