“Oh, much as usual! I’ve been busy lately. Oh, Ted, isn’t it lovely? Look at the reflections there. I do love this place!”
“Why, yes, of course; what more can one want? I should hate to live in a town! And think of leaving the village, and all the dear dull old people! I like dull old people--I like little ordinary things to do, like covering parish books. That’s the life I should choose--wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, I think I should. All the same, you know---- No, I like this best.”
“People talk of the stir and bustle of London,” went on May, dipping her hand into the water, and pulling up a long flowering reed, “but I should detest that. It would frighten me.”
“It’s my opinion that the bustle and stir is exaggerated,” said Ted. “People are much the same all the world over.”
“I don’t think that,” said May. “Miss Wrexham was here last week, staying at the Hall; father and I dined there once while she was here. Well, she is quite a different sort of person. She was always talking, and wanting to do something else. She couldn’t sit still for two minutes together, and she talked in a way I didn’t understand.”
“I can’t express it exactly,” said May. “She seemed to belong to a different order of woman altogether. One morning she asked me if I did any work in the parish. I told her the sort of things I spend my day in, and she said, ‘Oh, that must be so sweet! just living in a country place like this, and seeing poor people, and going to early celebrations. I suppose you go to London, don’t you, in the summer?’ Then, of course, I had to explain that country clergymen couldn’t do that sort of thing, and she said how stupid it was of her, and would I forgive her. She talked as if all one did was the same kind of thing--as if covering parish books was the same thing as going to communion. And why should she ask me to forgive her?”
“I imagine you didn’t like her much,” said Ted.
“No, I can’t say that I did. I don’t think she is genuine.”
“Oh, you can’t tell,” said Ted. “I know several people like that, and they are just the same as we are, just as genuine certainly, but they say whatever comes into their heads.”
“Well, that’s not genuine,” objected May.
“Because what you say ought to represent what you are. If you say anything that comes into your head, you make the big things and the little things all equal. Pull round, will you?--there’s the luncheon-bell.”