"Ay, you're like to be a patient of the doctor's," put in Mrs.
Goodenough.
"She seemed to me very affable, though she is so intimate with the
Countess and the family at the Towers; and is quite the lady herself;
dines late, I've heard, and everything in style."
"Style! very different style to what Bob Gibson, her husband, was
used to when first he came here,--glad of a mutton-chop in his
surgery, for I doubt if he'd a fire anywhere else; we called him Bob
Gibson then, but none on us dare Bob him now; I'd as soon think o'
calling him sweep!"
"I think it looks very bad for Miss Gibson!" said one lady, rather
anxious to bring back the conversation to the more interesting
present time. But as soon as Mrs. Goodenough heard this natural
comment on the disclosures she had made, she fired round on the
speaker:--
"Not at all bad, and I'll trouble you not to use such a word as that
about Molly Gibson, as I've known all her life. It's odd if you will.
I was odd myself as a girl; I never could abide a plate of gathered
gooseberries, but I must needs go and skulk behind a bush and gather
'em for myself. It's some folk's taste, though it mayn't be Miss
Browning's, who'd have all the courting done under the nose of the
family. All as ever I said was that I was surprised at it in Molly
Gibson; and that I'd ha' thought it was liker that pretty piece of a
Cynthia as they call her; indeed, at one time I was ready to swear
as it was her Mr. Preston was after. And now, ladies, I'll wish you
a very good night. I cannot abide waste; and I'll venture for it
Sally's letting the candle in the lantern run all to grease, instead
of putting it out, as I've told her to do, if ever she's got to wait
for me."
So with formal dipping curtseys the ladies separated, but not without
thanking Mrs. Dawes for the pleasant evening they had had; a piece of
old-fashioned courtesy always gone through in those days.