During much of this time Mr. Preston had been at Ashcombe; for Lord Cumnor had not been able to find an agent whom he liked to replace Mr. Preston; and while the inferior situation remained vacant Mr. Preston had undertaken to do the duties of both. Mrs. Goodenough had had a serious illness; and the little society at Hollingford did not care to meet while one of their habitual set was scarcely out of danger. So there had been very little visiting; and though Miss Browning said that the absence of the temptations of society was very agreeable to cultivated minds, after the dissipations of the previous autumn, when there were parties every week to welcome Mr. Preston, yet Miss Phoebe let out in confidence that she and her sister had fallen into the habit of going to bed at nine o‘clock, for they found cribbage night after night, from five o’clock till ten, rather too much of a good thing. To tell the truth, that winter, if peaceful, was monotonous in Hollingford; and the whole circle of gentility there was delighted to be stirred up in March by the intelligence that Mr. Kirkpatrick, the newly-made Q.C.,di was coming on a visit of a couple of days to his sister-in-law, Mrs. Gibson. Mrs. Goodenough’s room was the very centre of gossip; gossip had been her daily bread through her life, gossip was meat and wine to her now.
‘Dear-ah-me!’ said the old lady, rousing herself so as to sit upright in her easy chair, and propping herself with her hands on the arms; ‘who would ha’ thought she’d such grand relations! Why, Mr. Ashton told me once that a Queen’s counsel was as like to be a judge as a kitten is like to be a cat. And to think of her being as good as sister to a judge! I saw one oncst; and I know I thought as I shouldn’t wish for a better winter-cloak than his old robes would make me, if I could only find out where I could get ’em second-hand. And I know she’d her silk gowns turned and dyed and cleaned, and, for aught I know, turned again, while she lived at Ashcombe. Keeping a school, too, and so near akin to this Queen’s counsel all the time! Well, to be sure, it was not much of a school—only ten young ladies at the best o’ times; so perhaps he never heard of it.’
‘I’ve been wondering what they’ll give him to dinner,’ said Miss Browning. ‘It is an unlucky time for visitors; no game to be had, and lamb so late this year, and chicken hardly to be had for love or money.’
‘He’ll have to put up with calf’s head, that he will,’ said Mrs. Goodenough, solemnly. ‘If I’d ha’ got my usual health I’d copy out a receipt of my grandmother’s for a rolled calf’s head, and send it to Mrs. Gibson—the doctor has been very kind to me all through this illness—I wish my daughter in Combermere would send me some autumn chickens—I’d pass ‘em on to the doctor, that I would; but she’s been a killing of ’em all, and a sending of them to me, and the last she sent she wrote me word was the last.’
‘I wonder if they’ll give a party for him!’ suggested Miss Phoebe. ‘I should like to see a Queen’s counsel for once in my life. I have seen javelin-men,dj but that’s the greatest thing in the legal line I ever came across.’
‘They’ll ask Mr. Ashton, of course,’ said Miss Browning. ‘The three black graces, Law, Physic, and Divinity, as the song calls them. Whenever there’s a second course, there’s always the clergyman of the parish invited in any family of gentility.’
‘I wonder if he’s married!’ said Mrs. Goodenough. Miss Phoebe had been feeling the same wonder, but had not thought it maidenly to express it, even to her sister, who was the source of knowledge, having met Mrs. Gibson in the street on her way to Mrs. Goodenough’s.
‘Yes, he’s married, and must have several children, for Mrs. Gibson said that Cynthia Kirkpatrick had paid them a visit in London, to have lessons with her cousins. And she said that his wife was a most accomplished woman, and of good family, though she brought him no fortune.’
‘It’s a very creditable connexion, I’m sure; it’s only a wonder to me as how we’ve heard so little talk of it before’ said Mrs. Goodenough. ‘At the first look of the thing, I shouldn’t ha’ thought Mrs. Gibson was one to hide away her fine relations under a bushel; indeed, for that matter, we’re all of us fond o’ turning the best breadth o’ the gown to the front. I remember speaking o’ breadths, how I’ve undone my skirts many a time and oft to put a stain or a grease-spot next to poor Mr. Goodenough. He’d a soft kind of heart when first we was married and he said, says he, “Patty, link thy right arm into my left one, then thou‘lt be nearer to my heart”; and so we kept up the habit, when, poor man, he’d a deal more to think on than romancing on which side his heart lay; so as I said, I always put my damaged breadths on the right hand, and when we walked arm in arm, as we always did, no one was never the wiser.’
‘I should not be surprised if he invited Cynthia to pay him another visit in London,’ said Miss Browning. ‘If he did it when he was poor, he’s twenty times more likely to do it now he’s a Queen’s counsel.’
‘Aye, work it by the rule o’ three, and she stands a good chance. I only hope it won’t turn her head; going up visiting in London at her age. Why, I was fifty before ever I went!’
‘But she has been in France; she’s quite a travelled young lady,’ said Miss Phoebe.
Mrs. Goodenough shook her head for a whole minute before she gave vent to her opinion.
‘It’s a risk,’ said she, ‘a great risk. I don’t like saying so to the doctor, but I shouldn’t like having my daughter, if I was him, so cheek-by-jowl with a girl as was brought up in the country where Robespierre and Bonyparte was born.’1
‘But Buonaparte was a Corsican,’ said Miss Browning, who was much farther advanced both in knowledge and in liberality of opinions than Mrs. Goodenough. ‘And there’s a great opportunity for cultivation of the mind afforded by intercourse with foreign countries. I always admire Cynthia’s grace of manner, never too shy to speak, yet never putting herself forwards; she’s quite a help to a party; and if she has a few airs and graces, why, they’re, natural at her age! Now as for dear Molly, there’s a kind of awkwardness about her—she broke one of our best china cups last time she was at a party at our house, and spilt the coffee on the new carpet; and then she got so confused that she hardly did anything but sit in a corner and hold her tongue all the rest of the evening.’
‘She was so sorry for what she had done, sister,’ said Miss Phoebe, in a gentle tone of reproach; she was always faithful to Molly.
‘Well, and did I say she wasn’t? but was there any need for her to be stupid all the evening after?’
‘But you were rather sharp—rather displeased———’
‘And I think it my duty to be sharp, aye, and cross too, when I see young folks careless. And when I see my duty clear I do it; I’m not one to shrink from it, and they ought to be grateful to me. It’s not every one that will take the trouble of reproving them, as Mrs. Goodenough knows. I’m very fond of Molly Gibson, very, for her own sake and for her mother’s too; I’m not sure if I don’t think she’s worth half a dozen Cynthias, but for all that she shouldn’t break my best china teacup, and then sit doing nothing for her livelihood all the rest of the evening.’