United States or Libya ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
How were they better than the rest of the neighborhood, who were content to gossip and gape and take the fortunes of the Tristrams as mere matter for their own entertainment? "I've made you look ashamed of yourselves now," he laughed. "Well, I must do the thing myself, I suppose. What a pity Miss Swinkerton isn't here!" Cecily came down.
"We must remember that she's a girl, my dear," Miss S. observed to Mrs Trumbler. "She must know about it," Mrs Trumbler suggested. "But I dare say you're right, Miss Swinkerton." "If such a thing had happened in my family, I should consider myself personally affronted by any reference to the persons concerned."
It is something to have a case that can be argued at all; morality has a sad habit of leaving us without a leg to stand on. In the afternoon of that day Duplay went down to Fairholme. Miss Swinkerton passed him on the road and smiled sagaciously. Oh, if Miss S. had known the truth about his errand! A gossip in ignorance has pathos as a spectacle.
I don't know. Is there?" He did not so much as look up from his paper. "He's coming with us to Blent to-night, I suppose?" "Yes. And he seems quite excited about that. And he was positively rude to Miss Swinkerton at lunch, when she told him that Lady Tristram meant to give a ball next winter. I expect his nerves are out of order." Small wonder if they were, surely!
"Look here, Southend, if you're going to do exactly what all my friends and neighbors, beginning with Miss Swinkerton, are doing, I shall go and write letters." With a nod he walked into the next room, leaving Neeld alone with his inquisitive friend. Southend lost no time. "What's happened about Janie Iver? There was some talk " "It's all over," whispered Neeld with needless caution.
Bible-readings, a savings-bank, and cottage-gardens were so inextricably mingled in it that the beneficiary, if she liked one, had to go in for them all. "Just my object," Miss Swinkerton would remark triumphantly as she set the flower-pots down on the Bibles, only to find that the bank-books had got stored away with the seed. Clearly Mrs Iver, chief aide-de-camp, had no leisure.
Her father had gone to London on business showing, to Mr Neeld's relief, no disposition to take the Journal with him to read on the way Neeld was absurdly nervous about the Journal now. Her mother was engrossed in a notable scheme which Miss Swinkerton had started for the benefit of the poor of Blentmouth.
All our old ladies are talking fifteen to the dozen about Harry Tristram, and Lady Tristram, and me, and my family, and well, I dare say you're in it by now, Southend! There's an old cat named Swinkerton, who is positively beyond human endurance; she waylays me in the street. And Mrs Trumbler, the vicar's wife, comes and talks about Providence to my poor wife every day. So I fled."
"We've only been three or four times, Miss Swinkerton." "Six, I was told," observed Miss S., with an air of preferring accuracy. "Oh, I should be very pleased to see him married to Janie Mr Tristram, I mean, of course but she mustn't expect too much, my dear. Where's your uncle?" "At Fairholme, I expect," answered the Imp demurely.
Mrs Iver was there, and Mrs Trumbler the vicar's wife, a meek woman, rather ousted from her proper position by the energy of Miss Swinkerton; she was to manage the Bible-reading department, which was not nearly so responsible a task as conducting the savings-bank, and did not involve anything like the same amount of supervision of other people's affairs.
Word Of The Day