“Yes,” said Mrs. Ranger, “we’re going to Brixton for the blankets that have been spun of last year’s wool, next week, and p’raps we’ll drop in on the way home.”
“Do,” said Mrs. Simpson, “and you kin stay supper and visit a spell; our cider’ll be made by then. Len’s been over to the cooper about the mill this week. But if you should hear anything in the meantime, jest put on your bunnit and come acrost the fields neighbourly.”
“Yes, I will,” said Mrs. Ranger; “I guess things is comin’ to a head; I wouldn’t be surprised any day——”
“Nor Me,” said Mrs. Simpson emphatically. “Good night.”
“Good night. It gets dark real soon now.”
“Yes, there’s quite a tang to the air to-night. It’ll be frost in no time.”
“Well,” soliloquized Mrs. Simpson, as she betook herself home, “Liz Ranger thinks just the same’s I do; that’s evident. My sakes! How Mabella Lansing can go through with it is more’n I can figure.”
“It’s terrible!” said Mrs. Ranger, going back leisurely to the house. “It’s downright terrible. I guess Lanty went on awful to-day. Mrs. Simpson is jest full of it, but sakes! I should think she’d kind of talk low of drinkin’ and sich, remembering her own Len. He was a rip, Len Simpson was, if ever there was one! But that don’t seem to be a bridle on Gert Simpson’s tongue. It’s enough to bring a jidgment on her, the way she talks. I wonder how Temp’rins Peck ’ll like Lanty’s goin’s on?”
These reflections of Mrs. Ranger’s upon Mrs. Simpson were no doubt edifying, but certainly she had carried on the conversation with quite as great a gusto as Mrs. Simpson. And if she had not enjoyed it as much it was only because Mrs. Simpson, being a redoubtable conversationalist, had filched the finest morsels of the retrospective talk for herself, it was therefore probably more a sense of wounded _amour propre_ than genuine condemnation of Mrs. Simpson which led her to criticize the latter’s conversational methods.
Mrs. Ranger had an uneasy and unsatisfactory idea that she had merely given Mrs. Simpson her cues.
Mabella made strong coffee that night for supper instead of tea. She dressed Dorothy in the beribboned dress that Sidney had sent from Boston. She talked cheerily and brightly to her husband. She rose from her place and came round with his cup and put it beside him, letting one hand fall with a passing but loving touch upon his shoulder as she did so. But she did not look at his face once during all the time of supper. She dreaded to see the crown of shame upon the brow of her king. For herein again Mabella showed the steadfastness of her adherence to her husband. She suffered because he suffered. It was not the fear of the scandal that would arise, it was not the thought of her own probable future which stung her to the heart, although these thoughts were both bitter as wormwood.