All Bennets had the gift of tracing genealogies by faith rather than by sight. A naive confidence in the magic of Birth dignified a curiosity that arose not from snobbishness alone.
A shadow fell across the lawn, darkening the upturned daisy-faces at their feet.
"Well, well, well! Gossiping your heads off as usual, you two women?" boomed Mr. Hammond's hearty voice.
They turned and looked up to where his figure dominated them, ponderous, aggressive, radiating heat and energy. Arthur Hammond had driven from the mill, but his great legs were encased from the knees downwards in leather gaiters, and from the knees upwards in vast checked breeches. His face was crimson, and his thick, darkly red hair damp with perspiration. He wiped his head and whiskers with a blue silk handkerchief, smoothing carefully into shape the heavy moustache of which he was inordinately proud. He beamed contentedly upon his women.
"Well, Mrs. H., how's tricks?"
His wife flushed slightly at the vulgarity of his phrase, even while she felt, faintly across a gulf of disenchantment, the fascination of his great virility.
"We have been discussing a school for the children, Arthur," she said, her pretty voice as usual reacting with increased gentility in his presence. "Beatrice agrees with me that Hardrascliffe has many advantages."
"Bee knows a thing or two, what? Well, Mrs. H., I leave it to you. I make the cash, Bee, but I let my wife do the spending."
It was true. His faith in her perspicacity was absolute. His offences against her womanhood had never dimmed his appreciation of her wisdom.
"You really think that it would be the best thing, Arthur?" Mrs. Hammond asked, with an assumption of deference only permitted when she had already made up her mind.