Hester was skimming back towards them.
"Don"t mention it to James and his wife," she said to d.i.c.k. "He has to speak at a temperance meeting to-night. I will tell them when the meeting is over."
"That"s just as well," said d.i.c.k, "for I know if James jawed much at me I should act on the text that it is more blessed to give than to receive."
"In what way?"
"Either way," said d.i.c.k. "Tongue or fist. It does not matter which, so long as you give more than you get. And the text is quite right. It is blessed, for I"ve tried it over and over again, and found it true every time. But I don"t want to try it on James if he"s anything like what he was as a curate."
"He is not much altered," said Hester.
"He is the kind of man that would not alter much," said d.i.c.k. "I expect G.o.d Almighty likes him as he is."
Mr. and Mrs. Gresley, meanwhile, were receiving Mrs. Pratt and the two Misses Pratt in the drawing-room. Selina and Ada Pratt were fine, handsome young women, with long upper lips, who wore their smart sailor hats tilted backwards to show their bushy fringes, and whose m.u.f.f-chains, with swinging pendent hearts, silk blouses and sequin belts and brown boots represented to Mrs. Gresley the highest pinnacle of the world of fashion.
Selina was the most popular, being liable to shrieks of laughter at the smallest witticisms, and always ready for that species of amus.e.m.e.nt termed "bally-ragging" or "hay-making." But Ada was the most admired.
She belonged to that type which in hotel society and country towns is always termed "queenly." She "kept the men at a distance." She "never allowed them to take liberties," etc., etc. She held her chin up and her elbows out, and was considered by the section of Middleshire society in which she shone to be very distinguished. Mrs. Pratt was often told that her daughter looked like a d.u.c.h.ess; and this facsimile of the aristocracy, or rather of the most distressing traits of its latest recruits, had a manner of lolling with crossed legs in the parental carriage and pair which was greatly admired. "Looks as if she was born to it all," Mr. Pratt would say to his wife.
Mrs. Gresley was just beginning to fear her other guests were not coming when two tall figures were seen walking across the lawn, with Hester between them.
Mr. Gresley sallied forth to meet them, and blasts of surprised welcome were borne into the drawing-room by the summer air.
"But it was locked. I locked it myself." Inaudible reply.
"Padlocked. Only opens to the word Moon. Key on my own watch-chain."
Inaudible reply.
"Hinges! ha! ha! ha! Very good, d.i.c.k. Likely story that. I see you"re the same as ever. Travellers" tales. But we are not so easily taken in, are we, Hester?"
Mrs. Gresley certainly had the gift of prophecy as far as the Pratts were concerned. Mrs. Pratt duly took the expected "fancy" to Rachel, and pressed her to stay at "The Towers" while she was in the neighborhood, and make further acquaintance with her "young ladies."
"Ada is very pernickety," she said, smiling towards that individual conversing with d.i.c.k. "She won"t make friends with everybody, and she gives it me" (with maternal pride) "when I ask people to stay whom she does not take to. She says there"s a very poor lot round here, and most of the young ladies so ill-bred and empty she does not care to make friends with them. I don"t know where she gets all her knowledge from.
I"m sure it"s not from her mother. Ada, now you come and talk a little to Miss West."
Ada rose with the air of one who confers a favor, and Rachel made room for her on the sofa, while Mrs. Pratt squeezed herself behind the tea-table with Mrs. Gresley.
The conversation turned on bicycling.
"I bike now and then in the country," said Ada, "but I have not done much lately. We have only just come down from town, and, _of course_, I never bike in London."
Rachel had just said that she did.
"Perhaps you are nervous about the traffic," said Rachel.
"Oh! I"m not the least afraid of the traffic, but it"s such bad form to bike in London."
"That, of course, depends on how it"s done," said Rachel; "but I am sure in your ease you need not be afraid."
Ada glared at Rachel, and did not answer.
When the Pratts had taken leave she said to her mother:
"Well, you can have Rachel West if you want to, but if you do I shall go away. She is only Birmingham, and yet she"s just as stuck up as she can be."
The Pratts were "Liverpool."
"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Pratt with natural pride, "it"s well known no one is good enough for you. But I took to Miss West, and an orphan and all, with all that money, poor thing!"
"She has no style," said Selina, "but she has a nice face; and she"s coming to stay with Sibbie Loftus next week, when she leaves Vi Newhaven. She may be Birmingham, Ada, but she"s just as thick with county people as we are."
"I did not rightly make out," said Mrs. Pratt, reflectively, "whether that tall gentleman, Mr. Vernon, was after Miss West or Hessie Gresley."
"Oh, ma! You always think some one"s after somebody else," said Ada, impatiently, whose high breeding obliged her to be rather peremptory with her simple parent. "Mr. Vernon is a pauper, and so is Hessie. And, besides, Hessie is not the kind of girl anybody would want to marry."
"Well, I"m not so sure of that," said Selina. "But if she had had any chances I know she would have told me, because I told her all about Captain Cobbett and Mr. Baxter."
CHAPTER XVIII
Le monde est plein de gens qui ne sont pas plus sages.
--LA FONTAINE.
If, after the departure of the Pratts, Rachel had hoped for a word with Hester, she was doomed to disappointment. Mr. Gresley took the seat on the sofa beside Rachel which Ada Pratt had vacated, and after a few kindly eulogistic remarks on the Bishop of Southminster and the responsibilities of wealth, he turned the conversation into the well-worn groove of Warpington.
Rachel proved an attentive listener, and after Mr. Gresley had furnished her at length with nutritious details respecting parochial work, he went on:
"I am holding this evening a temperance meeting in the Parish Room. I wish, Miss West, that I could persuade you to stay for it, and thus enlist your sympathies in a matter of vital importance."
"They have been enlisted in it for the last ten years," said Rachel, who was not yet accustomed to the invariable a.s.sumption on the part of Mr.
Gresley that no one took an interest in the most obvious good work until he had introduced and championed it. "But," she added, "I will stay with pleasure."
d.i.c.k, who was becoming somewhat restive under Mrs. Gresley"s inquiries about the Newhavens, became suddenly interested in the temperance meeting.
"I"ve seen many a good fellow go to the dogs through drink in the Colonies, more"s the pity," d.i.c.k remarked. "I think I"ll come too, James. And if you want a few plain words you call on me."
"I will," said Mr. Gresley, much gratified. "I always make a point of encouraging the laity--at least, those among them who are thoroughly grounded in Church teaching--to express themselves. Hear both sides, that is what I always say. The Bishop constantly enjoins on his clergy to endeavor to elicit the lay opinion. The chair this evening will be taken by Mr. Pratt, a layman."
The temperance meeting was to take place at seven o"clock, and possibly Rachel may have been bia.s.sed in favor of that entertainment by the hope of a quiet half-hour with Hester in her own room. At any rate, she secured it.
When they were alone Rachel produced Lady Newhaven"s note.
"Do come to Westhope," she said. "While you are under this roof it seems almost impossible to see you, unless we are close to it," and she touched the sloping ceiling with her hand. "And yet I came to Westhope, and I am going on to Wilderleigh, partly in order to be near you."
Hester shook her head.