These bukes from Miss Curtis were sanatory tracts, which Rachel was
constantly bestowing, and which on Sundays Mrs. Kelland spelt through,
with her finger under the line, in happy ignorance whether the subject
were temporal or spiritual, and feeling herself in the exemplary
discharge of a Sunday duty. Moreover, old feudal feeling made Rachel
be unmolested when she came down twice a week, opened the door of
the blackhole under the stairs, and read aloud something religious,
something improving, and a bit of a story, following it up by mental
arithmetic and a lesson on objects, which seemed to Mrs. Kelland the
most arrant nonsense in the world, and to her well-broken scholars was
about as interesting as the humming of a blue-bottle fly; but it was
poor Lovedy's one enjoyment, though making such havoc of her work that
it was always expiated by extra hours, not on her pillow, but at it.
These visits of Rachel were considered to encourage the Kelland
refractoriness, and it was officially intimated that it would be wise to
discontinue them, and that "it was thought better" to withdraw from Mrs.
Kelland all that direct patronage of her trade, by which the ladies
had enabled her to be in some degree independent of the middle-men,
who absorbed so much of the profit from the workers. Grace and Rachel,
sufficiently old inhabitants to remember the terrible wreck that had
left her a struggling widow, felt this a hard, not to say a vindictive
decision. They had long been a kind of agents for disposing of her wares
at a distance; and, feeling that the woman had received provocation,
Grace was not disposed to give her up, while Rachel loudly averred that
neither Mr. Touchett nor any of his ladies had any right to interfere,
and she should take no notice.
"But," said Grace, "can we run counter to our clergyman's direct
wishes?"
"Yes, when he steps out of his province. My dear Grace, you grew up in
the days of curatolatry, but it won't do; men are fallible even when
they preach in a surplice, and you may be thankful to me that you and
Fanny are not both led along in a string in the train of Mr. Touchett's
devotees!"
"I wish I knew what was right to do," said Grace, quietly, and she
remained wishing it after Rachel had said a great deal more; but
the upshot of it was, that one day when Grace and Fanny were walking
together on the esplanade, they met Mr. Touchett, and Grace said to him,
"We have been thinking it over, and we thought, perhaps, you would not
wish us not to give any orders to Mrs. Kelland. I know she has behaved
very ill; but I don't see how she is to get on, and she has this child
on her hands."