These words formed part of a conversation between John Smith and his wife on a Saturday evening in the spring which followed Knight’s departure from England. Stephen had long since returned to India; and the persevering couple themselves had migrated from Lord Luxellian’s park at Endelstow to a comfortable roadside dwelling about a mile out of St. Launce’s, where John had opened a small stone and slate yard in his own name.
“When we came here six months ago,” continued Mrs. Smith, “though I had paid ready money so many years in the town, my friskier shopkeepers would only speak over the counter. Meet ’em in the street half-an-hour after, and they’d treat me with staring ignorance of my face.”
“Look through ye as through a glass winder?”
“Yes, the brazen ones would. The quiet and cool ones would glance over the top of my head, past my side, over my shoulder, but never meet my eye. The gentle-modest would turn their faces south if I were coming east, flit down a passage if I were about to halve the pavement with them. There was the spruce young bookseller would play the same tricks; the butcher’s daughters; the upholsterer’s young men. Hand in glove when doing business out of sight with you; but caring nothing for a’ old woman when playing the genteel away from all signs of their trade.”
“True enough, Maria.”
“Well, to-day ’tis all different. I’d no sooner got to market than Mrs. Joakes rushed up to me in the eyes of the town and said, ‘My dear Mrs. Smith, now you must be tired with your walk! Come in and have some lunch! I insist upon it; knowing you so many years as I have! Don’t you remember when we used to go looking for owls’ feathers together in the Castle ruins?’ There’s no knowing what you may need, so I answered the woman civilly. I hadn’t got to the corner before that thriving young lawyer, Sweet, who’s quite the dandy, ran after me out of breath. ‘Mrs. Smith,’ he says, ‘excuse my rudeness, but there’s a bramble on the tail of your dress, which you’ve dragged in from the country; allow me to pull it off for you.’ If you’ll believe me, this was in the very front of the Town Hall. What’s the meaning of such sudden love for a’ old woman?”
“Can’t say; unless ’tis repentance.”
“Repentance! was there ever such a fool as you. John? Did anybody ever repent with money in’s pocket and fifty years to live?”
“Now, I’ve been thinking too,” said John, passing over the query as hardly pertinent, “that I’ve had more loving-kindness from folks to-day than I ever have before since we moved here. Why, old Alderman Tope walked out to the middle of the street where I was, to shake hands with me—so ’a did. Having on my working clothes, I thought ’twas odd. Ay, and there was young Werrington.”
“Who’s he?”