‘I say, Aubrey,’ said Tom, rather tired of the land and sea debate, ‘do just reach me a card, to take up some of this sand upon.’
Aubrey obeyed, and reading the black-edged card as he handed it, said, ‘Mrs. Pug. What? Pug ought to have been calling upon Mab.’
‘Maybe she will, in good earnest,’ observed Tom again in Ethel’s ear; while the whole room rang with the laughter that always befalls the unlucky wight guilty of a blunder in a name.
‘You don’t mean that you don’t know who she is, Aubrey!’ was the cry.
‘I—how should I?’
‘What, not Mrs. Pugh?’ exclaimed Daisy.
‘Pew or Pug—I know nothing of either. Is this edge as mourning for all the old pews that have been demolished in the church?’
‘For shame, Aubrey,’ said Mary seriously. ‘You must know it is for her husband.’
Aubrey set up his eyebrows in utter ignorance.
‘How true it is that one half the world knows nothing of the other!’ exclaimed Ethel. ‘Do you really mean you have never found out the great Mrs. Pugh, Mrs. Ledwich’s dear suffering Matilda?’
‘I’ve seen a black lady sitting with Mrs. Ledwich in church.’
‘Such is life,’ said Ethel. ‘How little she thought herself living in such an unimpressible world!’
‘She is a pretty woman enough,’ observed Tom.
‘And very desirous of being useful,’ added Richard. ‘She and Mrs. Ledwich came over to Cocksmoor this morning, and offered any kind of assistance.’
‘At Cocksmoor!’ cried Ethel, much as if it had been the French.
‘Every district is filled up here, you know,’ said Richard, ‘and Mrs. Ledwich begged me as a personal favour to give her some occupation that would interest her and cheer her spirits, so I asked her to look after those new cottages at Gould’s End, quite out of your beat, Ethel, and she seemed to be going about energetically.’
Tom looked unutterable things at Ethel, who replied with a glance between diversion and dismay.
‘Who is the lady?’ said Blanche. ‘She assaulted me in the street with inquiries and congratulations about Harry, declaring she had known me as a child, a thing I particularly dislike:’ and Mrs. Ernescliffe looked like a ruffled goldfinch.
‘Forgetting her has not been easy to the payers of duty calls,’ said Ethel. ‘She was the daughter of Mrs. Ledwich’s brother, the Colonel of Marines, and used in old times to be with her aunt; there used to be urgent invitations to Flora and me to drink tea there because she was of our age. She married quite young, something very prosperous and rather aged, and the glories of dear Matilda’s villa at Bristol have been our staple subject, but Mr. Pugh died in the spring, leaving his lady five hundred a year absolutely her own, and she is come to stay with her aunt, and look for a house.’
‘Et cetera,’ added Tom.
‘What, in the buxom widow line?’ asked Harry.
‘No, no!’ said Richard, rather indignantly.
‘No, in the pathetic line,’ said Ethel; ‘but that requires some self-denial.’
‘Our tongues don’t lose their venom, you see, Harry,’ put in the Doctor.
‘No indeed, papa,’ said Ethel, really anxious to guard her brothers. ‘I was very sorry for her at first, and perhaps I pity her more now than even then. I was taken with her pale face and dark eyes, and I believe she was a good wife, and really concerned for her husband; but I can’t help seeing that she knows her grief is an attraction.’
‘To simple parsons,’ muttered Tom along the tube of his microscope.
‘The sound of her voice showed her to be full of pretension,’ said Blanche. ‘Besides, Mrs. Ledwich’s trumpeting would fix my opinion in a moment.’
‘Just so,’ observed the Doctor.
‘No, papa,’ said Ethel, ‘I was really pleased and touched in spite of Mrs. Ledwich’s devotion to her, till I found out a certain manoeuvring to put herself in the foreground, and not let her sorrow hinder her from any enjoyment or display.’
‘She can’t bear any one to do what she does not.’
‘What! Mary’s mouth open against her too?’ cried Dr. May.
‘Well, papa,’ insisted Mary, ‘nobody wanted her to insist on taking the harmonium at Bankside last Sunday, just because Averil had a cold in her head; and she played so fast, that every one was put out, and then said she would come to the practice that they might understand one another. She is not even in the Bankside district, so it is no business of hers.’
‘There, Richard, her favours are equally distributed,’ said Aubrey, ‘but if she would take that harmonium altogether, one would not mind—it makes Henry Ward as sulky as a bear to have his sister going out all the evening, and he visits it on Leonard. I dare say if she stayed at home he would not have been such a brute about the rifle.’
‘I should not wonder,’ said Dr. May. ‘I sometimes doubt if home is sweetened to my friend Henry.’
‘O, papa!’ cried Mary, bristling up, ‘Ave is very hard worked, and she gives up everything in the world but her church music, and that is her great duty and delight.’
‘Miss Ward’s music must be a sore trial to the Pug,’ said Tom, ‘will it be at this affair at Abbotstoke?’
