“What is the good of carrying it there and back every day, if you don’t use it?”
“Ah, but in case she were to come, I would hastily adjust it under my feet, so as not to hurt her feelings. But she is not likely to walk so far.”
“I suppose she is perfectly devoted to you, like everybody else?”
He did not take any notice of her remark.
“So is Jane Anne!” she next observed.
“Jane Anne is a very clever girl,” replied Rivers, too single-minded and too busy to see the construction that might be put on the turn of his phrase.
“She may be a mute inglorious Milton!” remarked Mrs. Elles, “but I am sure she is not a nice nature. She looks a potential murderess with those lowering brows. As for Mrs. Popham, I don’t know her.”
“Ah, but you will!”
“I hope sincerely I shall not,” Mrs. Elles muttered, under her breath. Mrs. Popham might be a noble soul, and a very fair water-colour artist, but still a woman with surely an enquiring mind and a scent for irregular situations.
She began to dread the Pophams and Jane Anne, and to regard them as natural enemies. Jane Anne she could not avoid meeting about the house, and the girl was so antipathetic to her that she made a point of not encountering her eyes, and did this so obviously as to provoke an enmity which, possibly, had so far only existed in her own imagination.