Maggie nodded.
Lucile Mobry continued, “He seems like a most agreeable young man — some name which begins with ‘P,’ and we are eager to meet him, especially if Ruth is considering the possibility of a lasting attachment.”
“As for lasting attachment, Miss Mobry, I cannot answer. But you have nonetheless guessed his identity. It is Mr. Pardlow, who works in the mill.” Maggie subsided into her chair and took a nibble upon the proffered sponge biscuit of earlier mention.
Mr. Mobry cleared his throat and said, “I’m certain our friend Maggie here has numerous things to which she must attend on this Saturday half-holiday, so we shouldn’t long detain her, though your visits to this house, Maggie — with or without Ruth — are always welcome.”
“Thank you,” said Maggie, nodding and colouring slightly from the generous compliment.
“You’ve nearly finished your biscuit,” observed Lucile Mobry. “Have a damson tart.”
Maggie took a damson tart.
Mobry clasped his hands together, and, in the composed manner of a solicitor with intelligence of some import to convey to his client, he said, “Now. I’ve looked into the matter you brought before me and wish to report that I’ve succeeded in learning a bit of what it is you wish to know.”
Maggie’s eyelids uplifted in eager anticipation.
Mobry went on: “I consulted my diary for that period during which the baby — your sister’s twin brother — was put out. Is there any other way to say it? For I do not wish to cast aspersions on your mother. It is no business of mine the reason she and your father could not keep the child.”
“Mr. Mobry, you may cast all the aspersions you wish, for you would not be alone in questioning why my parents did such a thing. I know the reason, and I forgive my mother for it to the extent to which I’m able, but I would certainly understand if the liberality of my feelings for her, which comes from my having lived with her for so long and observed her in all her moods and dispositions, wasn’t shared by others.”
“‘Put out.’ There it is, Herbert; the phrase is acceptable. Now, move along.” Lucile seemed at that moment as eager to hear what her brother had to say as was Maggie, and for very good reason: Herbert Mobry had kept Lucile purposefully uninformed about the matter due to a tendency on her part to speak broadly of things out of turn and without her brother’s leave.
“Yes, yes,” said Mobry. “The family’s name was Caster. Well, it still is, as a matter of fact. Not a family of any great means, but Caster has always been a man of aspiration and promise. An apprentice cheesemonger here in Tulleford, he was set adrift when the cheeseman under whom he worked decided upon retirement to hand the shop over to his daughter.”
Lucile Mobry shook her head and narrowed her eyes depreciatingly. “To think! A woman selling cheese! Carrying that offensive smell of Stilton and Double Gloucester upon her person like a lunatic’s perfume. Maggie, dearest, do take the almond cake. Your hand seems to want it, the way it’s suspended above the serving plate.”
Maggie obligingly took the little almond cake and placed it on her own plate next to the little squares of half-nibbled pound cake and cocoa-nut cake.
“My sister,” said Mobry, in an apologetic tone, “carries her distaste for fragrant cheeses into every possible conversation. As it turned out, the cheesemonger’s daughter died only two years after taking over her father’s shop — which is why she isn’t there still.”
“She had an abscess of the stomach,” struck in Lucile, “no doubt from consuming mildewed food, which is exactly what I believe strongly fragrant cheeses to be.”
“Sister, dear — pray may I proceed? Maggie is waiting to hear what I have learnt.”
“I will remain silent,” replied Lucile, pouting a little from the upbraid. “Please, my dear, take a sweet seedcake and gooseberry tart.”
Herbert Mobry soldiered on. “The husband — your brother’s new father — took employment here in town wherever he could find it, but then was required by unrelenting near impecuniousness to remove himself and his wife and adopted son to Manchester, where prospects were far better. In fact, he wasn’t there for very long at all before he secured a most promising apprenticeship with a successful Mancunian cheesemonger, and eventually, as I understand it, became a top-sawyer cheeseman himself.”
“And whatever became of the son?” asked Maggie. “I should so like some day to meet my brother.”
“I have no doubt you will, dear girl,” said Mobry. “Caster was very prompt in responding to my letter of enquiry, once I was able to learn of his precise whereabouts. He did not give me the name of his grown son, nor where he may be at present, but I warrant it is only a matter of my asking. I have business in Manchester next week, and I will make a point of paying a visit to Mr. and Mrs. Caster to learn these very things.”
“Thank you ever so much, Mr. Mobry. Up until the point of my discovering the existence of my brother, Jane was the only one of us to have a brother, although she’s hardly taken pride in the family affiliation. The thought that I too should have a brother, and that he should have been raised far removed from the venomous influence of my morally bankrupt father, is a most propitious development. I can scarcely believe it.”
Miss Mobry took Maggie’s hand and held it firmly. “Do not raise your hopes too high, my darling girl, for there are few brothers who are as exemplary in temperament and disposition as is my brother,” and then with a mischievous wink in that very gentleman’s direction, she codicilled, “except when he should be domineering and officious. But thankfully, such misbehaviour manifests itself infrequently. Please, have another—”
“I cannot endure another bite,” interrupted Maggie, placing her hand upon her stomach in demonstration of the pain of overindulgence that was more than likely to strike her if she didn’t suspend her bolting of everything Ruth’s aunt was putting before her. Maggie uprose from her chair. “You’ve both been most kind, and I’m quite eager to find out everything there is to know about my brother. Perhaps, if the Casters are willing, I’ll go thither myself.”
“I would not advise it,” Mobry cautioned. “Allow me first to lay the proper groundwork. It’s a delicate matter to reunite brother and sister when the brother, perhaps just like you, never knew there was a sibling in the picture.”
Maggie nodded. She departed after accepting compliments on behalf of her mother (in spite of the historical fact of the woman having given away to total strangers the fruit of her maternal loins) and after a promise was made by Mobry to report to Maggie every little tiddle and jot of what he gleaned from his impending trip to Manchester.
An hour later, having betaken herself to the town common where the fresh air helped her to think more clearly, Maggie came to rue her accommodating subscription to Mobry’s proposal that his visit to Manchester should precede hers. “After all, he’s my brother!” she proclaimed to the grass and to the shrubberies, “and I have every right to find things out for myself without need of an intermediary. Moreover, if I am to betake myself with all dispatch to that city not so very distant, the trip will prevent me from exchanging harsh words with my mother over why she would ever do such a fell and cruel thing as to give up my brother, and why, once she’d done it, she’d never found need to tell me about it.”
Whereupon, Maggie rushed home and filled her little hand-portmanteau with a few overnight necessaries, and drew out a sovereign and some silver from the jewellery drawer in her bedroom bureau, and, not wishing to wait for her mother’s return from her after noon visit with Mrs. Forrest, lest she miss the last train to Manchester, Maggie dashed off a note to Mrs. Barton, which said she was going away for the night. Maggie could not keep herself from adding, “to ascertain facts pertaining to my brother, which you should have named years ago, you blatant banisher of boy babies!” But then, thinking the last phrase superfluously hateful and not entirely accurate (there having been only one boy baby at issue, and the blatancy of its banishing having yet to be confirmed), she struck it through.