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Then I asked my aunt all about you. I was never at Angleford in my life, and if I had heard the rector's name as a boy I did not recollect it." "Yes, it is strange. One is too quick at coming to conclusions. I have to beg your pardon, Mr. Walcott, for I really did think that that Mrs. Bundlecombe was your mother, and that " "That I was not going under my own name?
Bundlecombe. "But, there! maybe I'm hard on her, poor thing, which I ought not to be, seeing that I know what trouble is, and how strangely marriages do turn out sometimes. But if there is a husband in the case, it's shameful the way he neglects her, never coming to see her, and going abroad on business, as she says, while she stays with her grandmother!" "She pays Mrs. Harrington," remarked Mrs.
"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Bundlecombe, in a mollified voice, "if you are married to a good man, I am very glad, indeed. And I hope he is well to-do, and makes you happy. You are nicely dressed, Milly, but nice clothes are not everything, are they?" "No, indeed, they are not. Oh, yes, Mr. Beadon is good to me in every way, so you need not trouble yourself on my account."
You looked as if you had something against her." "I've this against her," said Mrs. Bundlecombe, smoothing down her black apron with dignity, "that I believe there's something wrong about that marriage, and that if I were Mrs. Harrington I wouldn't be satisfied until I'd seen her marriage lines." "Perhaps she has seen them," said Mrs. Chigwin, the pacific.
Bundlecombe of Thorley!" Mrs. Bundlecombe was a bookseller in her own right, in a village some three miles from Angleford. Her husband had died four years before Mr. Campion, and his widow made an effort to carry on the business. The rector in his palmy days had had many dealings with Mr.
The manifold strain upon her mind had tried her too much, and for several weeks after the funeral Clara Graham was nursing her through a dangerous illness. The message which had been sent by Lettice to Alan, by the mouth of Mrs. Bundlecombe, had not lost much in its transit. "Tell him," she had said, "that I have heard what he has suffered.
Bundlecombe went away comforted, and took some comfort back with her to the dingy room in Alfred Place. It was hard for Lettice to turn to her work again, as though nothing had happened since she last laid down her pen.
Chigwin, Alan's aunt was happier than she had ever hoped to be again, and the only drawback to her felicity was the thought of her nephew's troubles and solitude. The next cottage to Mrs. Chigwin's was inhabited by old Mrs. Harrington, the grandmother of Lettice's first maid. There had been no love lost between Mrs. Bundlecombe and Mrs. Harrington, when they once lived in the same town.
Bundlecombe looked where he pointed, and was almost as much surprised as himself to see Lettice's former maid, Milly, walking in the garden with all the airs and graces of a grand lady. She had on a fur cloak, and a little cap to match, and she looked so handsome and well-dressed that it would not have been surprising if Alan had not recognized her.
Bundlecombe, whilst returning the twopence, had made some disparaging remarks on the other lady's manners, meanness, dress, age, and general inferiority. The affront had never been quite forgotten on either side, and it was not without much ruffling of their mental plumage that the two old bodies found themselves established within a few yards of each other.
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