A rosy, curly-headed, blue-eyed boy was lounging over his mother's knees, pulling at her smart cap-ribbons, and beating all the stiffness out of her gay muslin dress, by pounding it with his head. He was a beautiful child, and seemed to have it all his own way. Mrs. Sly and her daughter, Sarah Ann, a coarse black-browed lass of eighteen, and Mrs. Martha Lane, who kept the small shop, and sold tapes, needles, and pins, and other small wares in the village, made up the party.
Neither Mrs. Rushmere, nor her adopted daughter, Dorothy Chance, had been included in the invitation.
Miss Watling looked round the room with a gracious smile, to ascertain that her guests were all comfortably seated, before she introduced the great topic, the discussion of which had formed the chief inducement in bringing them together.
"Well, ladies, I suppose you have heard the news? That Miss Dolly Nobody won't be Mrs. Gilbert Rushmere after all."
"I never thought she wu'd," said Mrs. Joe, looking up from the child's sock she was knitting. "Gilbert know'd what he was about, when he run'd away. It was just to get quit o' her."
"I always said so from the first," returned Miss Watling, "but you all had such ideas of the girl, that I could get no one to believe me."
"I don't think Gilbert has behaved well," said Mrs. Barford, cautiously. "Dorothy Chance is a good girl, and a pretty girl."
"Pretty," sneered Miss Watling, interrupting her friend very unceremoniously, "I could never see any beauty in the wench, with her round black eyes and skin as dark as a gipsy's. I don't believe Gilbert Rushmere cared a snap of his fingers for her."
"I know, Nancy, that he was very fond of her," suggested Mrs. Barford, "and you know it too; for I have been told that he made you his confidant, and begged you not to press upon him the offer you made him, of taking your farm on shares."
This was said very quietly, but it was a home-thrust. Miss Watling coloured up to the eyes.