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She had read all the romantic fiction in the lending library, and all the works of light popular science, and still lighter and more popular theology, besides borrowing all the readable books from the vicarage. She had exhausted Queningford. It had no more to give her. Queningford would have considered that a young lady who could do all that had done enough to prove her possession of brains.
"Do excuse my going on with this. Arthur wants it." Susie smiled in recognition of the familiar phrase. Ever since he had first appeared in Queningford, Arthur had always been wanting something. But, as she looked at the poor coat, she reflected that one thing he had never wanted, or had never asked for, and that was help.
They were walking together in the Queningford fields, when Arthur stopped suddenly and turned to her. "Aggie," he said, "supposing, after all, we can never marry?" "Well," said Aggie, calmly, "if we don't we shall still lead our real life together. "But how, if we're separated?" "It would go on just the same. But we sha'n't be separated. I shall get something to do in town and live there.
It was market-day in Queningford. Aggie Purcell was wondering whether Mr. Hurst would look in that afternoon at the Laurels as he had looked in on other market-days. Supposing he did, and supposing Mr. Gatty were to look in, too, why then, Aggie said, it would be rather awkward. But whether awkward for herself, or for Mr. Gatty, or Mr.
Arthur Gatty was a young clerk in a solicitor's office in London; he was down at Queningford on his Easter holiday, staying with cousins at the County Bank. Both had the merit of being young men whom Miss Purcell had never seen before. She was so tired of all the young men whom she had seen. Not that pretty Aggie was a flirt and a jilt and a heartless breaker of hearts.
Somehow, in the seven years of his married life, he had never seen this calamity in front of him. His dreams had always been of a time when their children should be out in the world, when he saw himself walking with his wife in some quiet country place, like Queningford. If she had not lied! He sought for calm words wherewith to support her; but no words came. He clutched at the bedclothes.
Not that Queningford had ever wanted her to prove it; its young men, at any rate, very much preferred that she should leave her brains and theirs alone. And Aggie had brains enough to be aware of this; and being a very well-behaved young lady, and anxious to please, she had never mentioned any of her small achievements.
The manners of Queningford are not cultivated to that delicate pitch when flirtation becomes a decorative art, and Aggie would have esteemed it vulgar. But Aggie was very superior and fastidious. She wanted things that no young man in Queningford would ever be able to offer her. Aggie had longings for music, better than Queningford's best, for beautiful pictures, and for poetry.
She was grateful to him, too, for holding Susie's attention and diverting it from all the things she didn't want her to see. Above all, she was afraid of Susie's inquisitive tongue and searching eyes. She flung herself into fictitious reminiscences of the Queningford stud. She couldn't have done worse. "Oh, Aggie," said her sister, "you do mix them up so."
She had just got to make up her mind about him which would take a little time and then either she was a happy married woman or, said Aggie, coyly, a still happier old maid in Queningford forever. It was surprising how little the alternative distressed her. It was the last week in April, and Mr. Gatty's Easter holiday was near its end.
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