“That is hers!” she said.
Mrs. Popham held it up to the light and read—in characters half effaced by time, not by prudence—the letters “P. E.” on its battered, silver handle, and, furthermore, the address, 59 Saville Place, Newcastle.
“E. doesn’t spell Frick!” said the Board School girl, proudly.
“I don’t quite like doing it,” murmured the Vicar’s wife. “But—really—I can’t let this go on! It can do her no harm if she is respectable, and if she isn’t—? One must think of Mr. Rivers! Read out that address again, Jane Anne.”
Jane Anne looked quite animated as she did so, and Mrs. Popham wrote it down in a note-book.
“Now, put the umbrella back!” that lady added, in rather a shame-faced way, “and leave it all to me. And, Jane Anne, mind you practise up that thing of Arcadelt’s in time for Divine service; you seemed rather weak in it last Sunday, or perhaps you were not attending? I saw her in church. She probably gets Mr. Rivers to take her there to throw a little dust in all our eyes. I notice she never kneels or sings. It is evidently the first time she has ever been regularly to church in her life!”
CHAPTER VIII
Two days after this incident, of which she naturally remained unaware, Mrs. Elles was well enough to walk across three fields to meet the artist on his way back from his work. She exulted in the fact that she had become so countrified as to disdain to put on a hat even, and her red-golden hair, less elaborately arranged than it used to be, shone beautifully in the slanting light of the setting sun.
She waved her hand to him as he came in sight, crying, in accents of frank camaraderie: “Have you had a good day?”
“Not at all!”