holiday. I should like to see her for a little while spend money like water, buy all manner of useless lovely things, and dine and dance and go to plays."
Mrs. Hope put up her glasses to regard her daughter.
"Dear me, Augusta, am I hearing right? Who is more severe than you on the mad women who dance, and sup, and frivol their money away? But there's something in what you say. The bairn needs a playtime…. To think that Jeannie Laidlaw's son should change the whole of Jean's life. Preposterous!"
Mrs. Duff-Whalley was having tea with Mrs. Jowett when the news was broken to her. It was a party, but only, as Mrs. Duff-Whalley herself would have put it, "a purely local affair," meaning some people on the Hill.
Mrs. Jowett sat in her soft-toned room, pouring out tea into fragile cups with hands that seemed to demand lace ruffles, so white were they and transparent. The room was like herself, exquisitely fresh and dainty; white walls hung with pale water-colours in gilt frames, Indian rugs of soft pinks and blues and greys, plump cushions in worked muslin covers that looked as if they were put on fresh every morning. Photographs stood about of women looking sweetly into vacancy over the heads of pretty children, and books of verses, bound daintily in white and gold, lay on carved tables.
Mrs. Duff-Whalley did not care for Mrs. Jowett's tea-parties, and she always felt irritated by her drawing-room. The gentle voice of her hostess made her want to speak louder than usual, and she thought the conversation insipid to a degree. How could it be anything but insipid with Mrs. Jowett saying only "How nice," or "What a pity" at intervals? She did not even seem to care to hear Mrs. Duff-Whalley's news of "the County," and "dear Lady Tweedie," merely murmuring, "Oh, really," when told the most interesting and even startling facts.
"Uninterested idiot," thought Mrs. Duff-Whalley to herself as she turned from her hostess to Miss Mary Duncan, who at least had some sense, though both she and her sisters had a lamentable lack of style.
Miss Duncan's kind face beamed pleasantly. She was quite willing to listen to Mrs. Duff-Whalley as long as that lady pleased. She thought she needed soothing, so she agreed with everything she said, and made sensible little remarks at intervals. Mrs. Jowett was pouring out a second cup of tea for Mrs. Duff-Whalley when she said, "And have you heard about dear little Jean Jardine?"
"Has anything happened to her? I saw her the other day and she was all right."
"She's quite well, but haven't you heard? She has inherited a large fortune."
Mrs. Duff-Whalley said nothing for a minute. She could not trust herself to speak. Despised Jean, whom she had not troubled to ask to her parties, whom she had always felt she could treat anyhow, so poor was she and of no account. It had been bad enough to know that she was on terms of intimacy with Pamela Reston and her brother: to hear Miss Reston say that she meant to take her to London and entertain for her and to hear her suggest that Muriel might go to Jean's parties had been galling, but she had thrust the recollection from her, reflecting that fine ladies said much that they did not mean, and that probably the promised visit to London would never materialise. And now to be told this! A fortune: Jean—it was too absurd!
When she spoke, her voice was shrill with anger in spite of her efforts to control it.
"It can't be true. The Jardines have no relations that could leave them money."
"This isn't a relation," Mrs. Jowett explained. "It's someone Jean was kind to quite by chance. I think it is so sweet. It quite makes one want to cry. Dear Jean!"
Mrs. Duff-Whalley looked at the sentimental woman before her with bitter scorn.
"It would take more than that to make me cry," she snorted. "I wonder what fool wanted to leave Jean money. Such an unpractical creature! She'll simply make ducks and drakes of it, give it away to all and sundry, pauperise the whole neighbourhood."
"Oh, I don't think so," Miss Duncan broke in. "She has had a hard training, poor child. Such a pathetic mite she was when her great-aunt died and left her with David and Jock and the little Gervase Taunton! No one thought she could manage, but she did, and she has been so plucky, she deserves all the good fortune that life can bring her. I'm longing to hear what Jock says about this. I do like that boy."
"They are, all three, dear boys," said Mrs. Jowett. "Tim and I quite feel as if they were our own. Tim, dear," to that gentleman, who had bounced suddenly and violently into the room, "we are talking about the great news—Jean's fortune—"
"Ah yes, yes," said Mr. Jowett, distributing brusque nods to the women present. "What I want is a bit of thick string." (His wife's delicate drawing-room hardly seemed the place to look for such a thing.) "No, no tea, my dear. I told you I wanted a bit of thick string…. Yes, let's hope it won't spoil Jean, but I think it's almost sure to. Fortune hunters, too. Bad thing for a girl to have money…. Yes, yes, I asked the servants and Chart brought me the string basket, but it was all thin stuff. I'll lose the post, but it's always the way. Every day more rushed than another. Remind me, Janetta, to get some thick string to-morrow. I've no time to go down to the town to-day. Why, bless me, my morning letters are hardly looked at yet," and he fussed himself out of the room.
Mrs. Duff-Whalley rose to go.
"Then, Mrs. Jowett, I can depend on you to look after that collecting? And please be firm. I find that collectors are apt to be very lazy and unconscientious. Indeed, one told me frankly that in her district she only went to the people she knew. That isn't the way to collect. The only way is to get into each house—to stand on the doorstep is no use, they can so easily send a maid to refuse—and sit there till they give a subscription. Every year since I took it on there has been an increase, and I'll be frightfully disappointed if you let it go back."
Mrs. Jowett looked depressed. She knew herself to be one of the worst collectors on record. She was guiltily aware that she often advised people not to give; that is, if she thought their circumstances straitened!
"I don't know," she began, "I'm afraid I could never sit in a stranger's house and insist on being given money. It's so—so high-handed, like a highwayman or something."
"Think of the cause," said Mrs. Duff-Whalley, "not of your own feelings."
"Yes, of course, but … well, if there is a deficit, I can always raise my own subscription to cover it." She smiled happily at this solution of the problem.
Mrs. Duff-Whalley sniffed.
"'The conies are a feeble folk,'" she quoted rudely. "Well, good-bye. I shall send over all the papers and collecting books to-morrow. Muriel and I go off to London on Friday en route for the south. It will be pleasant to have a change and meet some interesting people. Muriel was just saying it's a cabbage's life we live in Priorsford. I often wonder we stay here…."
Mrs. Duff-Whalley went home a very angry woman. After dinner, sitting with Muriel before the fire in the glittering drawing-room, she discussed the matter.
"I know what'll be the end of it," she said. "You saw what a fuss Miss Reston made of Jean the other day when we called? Depend upon it, she knew the money was coming. I dare say she and her brother are as poor as church mice—those aristocrats usually are—and Jean's money will come in useful. Oh, we'll see her Lady Bidborough yet…. I tell you what it is, Muriel, the way this world's managed is past speaking about."
Mrs. Duff-Whalley was knitting a stocking for her son Gordon (her hands were seldom idle), and she waved it in her exasperation as she talked.
"Here are you, meant, as anyone can see, for the highest position,
