Mrs. Thompson: A Novel

by W. B. Maxwell

Fourteen—fifteen—past her sixteenth birthday! Jane is really growing up; and nearer and nearer draws the time when mother and grandmother will be confronted with the awful problem of finding her a suitable husband—a good husband, if such a thing exists on the broad surface of the earth. It is appalling to think about; but it cannot be blinked or evaded. The fiery chain of life must have its new link of flame: Jane must carry the torch, and give it safely to the small hands that are waiting somewhere in immeasurable darkness to grasp it and bear it still onward.

Once when Enid lightly hinted at this terrifying matter, Jane caught the hint that was not intended for her ears, and replied very shrewdly.

"It strikes me, mummy, that most likely you'll be married before I shall."

Mrs. Kenion laughed and flushed, and seemed rather gratified by this compliment; but she promised never to introduce Jane to a stepfather. No, she will never marry again—has no faintest inclination for further experiments of that sort. Once bit, twice shy. She will act on the adage; although, when she speaks so blandly of the bad ungrateful dog that bit her, one might almost suppose that she had forgotten nearly all the pain of the bite.

"Mother dear, isn't it wonderful? He is riding again;" and Enid looks up from the morning newspaper, sips her breakfast coffee, and speaks with calm admiration. She always reads the sporting news, and never misses an entry of Charlie's name in minor steeplechase meetings.

Here it is:—Mrs. Charles Kenion's Dreadnought; Trainer, private; Jockey, Mr. Kenion.

"And Charles is over forty-five. Really, I do think it's wonderful," says Enid calmly and admiringly. "But he shouldn't go on riding races. She oughtn't to let him. It can only end"—and Enid says this with unruffled calm—"in his breaking his neck."

But it seems that Charlie's neck is charmed: that it cannot be broken over the sticks, or—sinister thought!—that it is being preserved for another and more formal method of dislocation.

Nearer than the necessity of discovering a worthy mate for Jane, there looms the smaller necessity of presenting her at Court, giving her a London season, and so forth. As to the presentation, a very obliging offer has been tendered by the great lady of the county—wife of that local potentate who lives in the sheltered magnificence behind the awe-inspiring iron gates. Her ladyship has voluntarily suggested that she should take Miss Kenion, when properly feathered and betrained, into the effulgent presence of her sovereign.

Naturally, since those tremendous iron gates have opened to Mrs. Marsden-Thompson, no lesser entrances are closed against her. Success, if it is big enough, condones most offences; and the prejudiced objection to retail trade, under which Enid once suffered, has been generously waived. What she used artlessly to call county people make much of her and her daughter.