Colonel Keith was the person, however, with whom the
new comers chiefly fraternized, and he was amused
with their sense of the space for breathing compared
with the lanes and alleys of their own district.
The schools and cottages seemed to them so wonderfully
large, the children so clean, even their fishiness
a form of poetical purity, the people ridiculously
well off, and even Mrs. Kelland’s lace-school
a palace of the free maids that weave their thread
with bones. Mr. Mitchell seemed almost to grudge
the elbow room, as he talked of the number of cubic
feet that held a dozen of his own parishioners; and
needful as the change had been for the health of both
husband and wife, they almost reproached themselves
for having fled and left so many pining for want of
pure air, dwelling upon impossible castles for the
importation of favourite patients to enjoy the balmy
breezes of Avonmouth.
Rachel talked to them about the F. U. E. E., and was
delighted by the flush of eager interest on Mrs. Mitchell’s
thin face. “Objects” swarmed in
their parish, but where were the seven shillings per
week to come from? At any rate Mr. Mitchell
would, the first leisure day, come over to St. Herbert’s
with her, and inspect. He did not fly off at
the first hint of Mr. Mauleverer’s “opinions,”
but said he would talk to him, and thereby rose steps
untold in Rachel’s estimation. The fact
of change is dangerously pleasant to the human mind;
Mr. Mitchell walked at once into popularity, and Lady
Temple had almost conferred a public benefit by what
she so little liked to remember. At any rate
she had secured an unexceptionable companion, and many
a time resorted to his wing, leaving Bessie to amuse
Lord Keith, who seemed to be reduced to carry on his
courtship to the widow by attentions to her guest.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE FOX AND THE CROW.
“She just gave one squall,
When the cheese she let fall,
And the fox ran away with his prize.”
JaneTaylor.
“My dear,” said Mrs. Curtis, one Monday
morning, “I offered Colonel Keith a seat in
the carriage to go to the annual book-club meeting
with us. Mr. Spicer is going to propose him as
a member of the club, you know, and I thought the
close carriage would be better for him. I suppose
you will be ready by eleven; we ought to set out by
that time, not to hurry the horses.”
“I am not going,” returned Rachel, an
announcement that electrified her auditors, for the
family quota of books being quite insufficient for
her insatiable appetite, she was a subscriber on her
own account, and besides, this was the grand annual
gathering for disposing of old books, when she was
relied on for purchasing all the nuts that nobody
else would crack. The whole affair was one of
the few social gatherings that she really tolerated
and enjoyed, and her mother gazed at her in amazement.
