Part 11 (1/2)
”Are you sure it isn't Colonel Lund's mistake? Old gentlemen get very fanciful.” Thus Miss Wilson. But it seems Sally hasn't much doubt.
Rather the other way round, if anything!
”I thought it might be, all the way to Norland Square. Then I changed my mind coming up the hill. Of course, I don't know about mamma till I ask her. But I expect the Major's right about Mr. Fenwick.”
”But how does _he_ know? How do you know?”
”I don't know.” Sally tastes the points of a holly-leaf with her tongue-tip, discreetly, to see how sharp they are, and cogitates. ”At least,” she continues, ”I _do_ know. He never takes his eyes off mamma from the minute he comes into the house.”
”Oh!”
”Besides--lots of things! Oh no; as far as that goes, I should say _he_ was spooney.”
”I see. You're a vulgar child, all the same! But about your mother--that's the point.”
The vulgar child cogitates still more gravely.
”I should say _now_,” she says, after thinking it over, ”that--only I never noticed it at the time, you know----”
”That what?”
”That mamma knows Mr. Fenwick is spooney, and looks up at times to see that he's going on.”
Laet.i.tia seems to receive this idea with some hesitation or reserve.
”Looks up at times to see if he's going on?” she repeats inquiringly.
”Yes, of course--like we should. Only I didn't say 'see if.' I said 'see that.' It makes all the difference.”
Miss Wilson breaks into a laugh. ”And there you are all the time looking as if b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in your mouth, and as grave as a judge.”
Sally has to acquiesce in being kissed by her friend at this point; but she curls up a little as one who protests against being patronised. ”We-e-e-ell!” she says, lengthening out the word, ”why not? I don't see anything in _that_!”
”Oh no, dear--_that's_ all right! Why shouldn't it be?”
But this isn't candid of Laet.i.tia, whose speech and kiss had certainly appeared to impute suppressed insight, or penetration, or sly-pussness, or something of that sort to her young friend. But with an implied claim to rights of insight, on her own account, from seniority. Sally is _froissee_ at this, but not beyond jerking the topic into a new light.
”Of course, it's their being grown up that makes one stare so. If it wasn't for that....” But this gives away her case, surrenders all claim to her equality with Laet.i.tia's twenty-four years. The advantage is caught at meanly.
”That's only because you're a baby, dear. Wait till you're ten years older, and thirty-eight won't seem so old. I suppose your mother's about that?”
”Mother? Why, she's nearly thirty-nine!”
”And Mr. Fenwick?”
”Oh, _he's_ forty-one. _Quite!_ Because we talked it all over, and made out they were over eighty between them.”
”Who talked it over?”
”Why, him and her and me, of course. Last night.”