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Even Father Maconchy's reading of the situation was intelligent compared to that. "Miss Pettigrew says that the Trinity College authorities have taken the matter up and are strongly of opinion that you are financing the publication. Thormanby tells me that the same rumour is current in the club.
The signature, written with evident pain, told me that the dictator was my Uncle Thormanby. The "old enemy" was, as I knew, gout. "Miss Battersby is acting as my amanuensis." For the fifth or sixth time in my life I felt sorry for Miss Battersby. "Canon Beresford's girl has libelled eighty or ninety bishops in the most outrageous way.
"Then leave the question of the Archdeacon's qualifications," said my mother, "to those who have to elect him." "Not to me," I said hurriedly. "I couldn't work through that list of Selby-Harrison's. Try my uncle. Try Lord Thormanby. He'll like it." "There's one thing " said Lalage. "Leave it to the synod," said my mother. "Or to Lord Thormanby," I said. "Very well," said Lalage. "I will.
In fact, I expect, Lalage made you laugh." Miss Pettigrew smiled and then checked herself. Amusement struggled with a certain grimness for expression on her face. In the end she smiled again. "Lalage has always made me laugh," she said, "ever since she was quite a little girl. That's what makes it so difficult to manage her." "Why try?" I said. "Lord Thormanby has washed his hands of her.
What she said about Lalage I do not know, for the subject was dropped when I entered the room, but Miss Battersby's position evidently commanded my mother's sympathy. Shortly after leaving the rectory she was established, on my mother's recommendation, in Thormanby Park. Lord Thormanby, who is my uncle, has three daughters, all of them nice, well-disposed girls, not the least like Lalage.
If he lives to be seventy and goes on as he is going, Miss Battersby will have to retire in favour of some one who can write shorthand and manipulate a typewriter. She will then, I have no doubt, play a blameless part in life by settling flowers for Lady Thormanby. But all this is still a long way off.
Make Tom Kitterick carry them over to Thormanby Park and present them on bended knee, clad only in his shirt and with a halter round his neck." The Canon's gloom merely deepened. "I don't think," I said, "that you need fret about Miss Pettigrew. After all, it's her job. She must meet plenty of high-spirited girls." "I wasn't thinking of her," said the Canon.
Ordinary members merely subscribe. I am sending this appeal to father, Lord Thormanby, Miss Battersby, who is still there, and the Archdeacon, as well as to you." I breathed a sigh of great relief. Lalage was not threatening my colleagues with exposure in the press. She was merely asking for a subscription. I wrote at once, warmly commending the objects and methods of the society.
His forehead was actually furrowed with a frown when I had finished. I laid the letter down on the table and tapped it impressively with my forefinger. "That," I said, "strikes me as a remarkably good suggestion." Thormanby exploded. "Of all the damned idiots I've ever met," he said, "you're the worst.
Lalage chose to pretend that liberty and subjection are contradictory terms, but this is plainly absurd. Lord Thormanby talked over this part of the Gazette with me some months later and gave it as his opinion that a man whom he knew in the club had put the case very well by saying that there are several quite distinct kinds of liberty.
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