The chaplain, trembling with eagerness, set straight three or four bits of paper which he had deranged in opening the book. Then, not trusting it out of his own hands, he bore the book reverently into the landlady’s snuggery, and set it on the table. Mrs. Gilson rearranged her nose and glasses, and after gazing helplessly for a few moments at the broken screed, caught some thread of sense, clung to it desperately, and presently began to murmur disjointed sentences in the tone of one who thought aloud.
“Um—um—um—um!”
Had the chaplain been told a fortnight before that he would wait with bated breath for an old woman’s opinion of a document, he would have laughed at the notion. But so it was; and when a ray of comprehension broke the frowning perplexity of Mrs. Gilson’s face, and she muttered, “Lord ha’ mercy! The villain!” still more when an April cloud of mingled anger and pity softened her massive features—the chaplain’s relief was itself a picture.
“A plague on the rascal!” the good woman cried. “He’s put it so as to melt a stone, let alone a silly child like that! I don’t know that if he’d put it so to me, when I was a lass, I’d have told on him. I don’t think I would!”
“It’s plain that she’d no understanding with him!” Mr. Sutton cried eagerly. “You can see that, ma’am!”
“Well, I think I can. The villain!”
“It’s quite clear that she had broken with him!”
“It does look so, poor lamb!”
“Poor lamb indeed!” Mr. Sutton replied with feeling. “Poor lamb indeed!”
“Yet you’ll remember,” Mrs. Gilson answered—she was nothing if not level-headed—“he’d the lad to think of! He’d his boy to think of! I am sure my heart bled for him when he went out this morning. I doubt he’d not slept a wink, and——”