DOROTHY MAKES UP HER MIND
It was true that most ill-natured things had been
said at Lessboro’ and at Nuncombe Putney about
Mrs Stanbury and the visitors at the Clock House,
and that these ill-natured things had spread themselves
to Exeter. Mrs Ellison of Lessboro’, who
was not the most good-natured woman in the world,
had told Mrs Merton of Nuncombe that she had been
told that the Colonel’s visit to the lady had
been made by express arrangement between the Colonel
and Mrs Stanbury. Mrs Merton, who was very good-natured,
but not the wisest woman in the world, had declared
that any such conduct on the part of Mrs Stanbury was
quite impossible ‘What does it matter which
it is Priscilla or her mother?’ Mrs Ellison
had said. ’These are the facts. Mrs
Trevelyan has been sent there to be out of the way
of this Colonel; and the Colonel immediately comes
down and sees her at the Clock House. But when
people are very poor they do get driven to do almost
anything.’
Mrs Merton, not being very wise, had conceived it
to be her duty to repeat this to Priscilla; and Mrs
Ellison, not being very good-natured, had conceived
it to be hers to repeat it to Mrs MacHugh at Exeter.
And then Bozzle’s coming had become known.
’Yes, Mrs MacHugh, a policeman in mufti down
at Nuncombe! I wonder what our friend in the
Close here will think about it! I have always
said, you know, that if she wanted to keep things
straight at Nuncombe, she should have opened her purse-strings.’
From all which it may be understood, that Priscilla
Stanbury’s desire to go back to their old way
of living had not been without reason.
It may be imagined that Miss Stanbury of the Close
did not receive with equanimity the reports which
reached her. And, of course, when she discussed
the matter either with Martha or with Dorothy, she
fell back upon her own early appreciation of the folly
of the Clock House arrangement. Nevertheless,
she had called Mrs Ellison very bad names, when she
learned from her friend Mrs MacHugh what reports were
being spread by the lady from Lessboro’.
’Mrs Ellison! Yes; we all know Mrs Ellison.
The bitterest tongue in Devonshire, and the falsest!
There are some people at Lessboro’ who would
be well pleased if she paid her way there as well as
those poor women do at Nuncombe. I don’t
think much of what Mrs Ellison says.’
‘But it is bad about the policeman,’ said
Mrs MacHugh.
’Of course it’s bad. It’s all
bad. I’m not saying that it’s not
bad. I’m glad I’ve got this other
young woman out of it. It’s all that young
man’s doing. If I had a son of my own, I’d
sooner follow him to the grave than hear him call
himself a Radical.’
Then, on a sudden, there came to the Close news that
Mrs Trevelyan and her sister were gone. On the
very Monday on which they went, Priscilla sent a note
on to her sister, in which no special allusion was
made to Aunt Stanbury, but which was no doubt written
with the intention that the news should be communicated.
