Part 107 (1/2)

”Did you?” said Margery. ”What else did you think?”

”And your sister, poor dear!” continued Harriet, pa.s.sing over the retort, and speaking sympathizingly, for she generally found it to her interest to keep friends with Margery. ”Has she got well?”

”As well as she ever will be, I suppose,” was Margery's crusty answer.

She sat down, untied her bonnet and threw it off, and unpinned her shawl. Harriet snuffed the candle and resumed her work, which appeared to be sewing tapes on a pinafore of Meta's.

”Has she torn 'em off again?” asked Margery, her eyes following the progress of the needle.

”She's always tearing 'em off,” responded Harriet, biting the end of her thread.

”And how's things going on here?” demanded Margery, her voice a.s.suming a confidential tone, as she drew her chair nearer to Harriet's. ”The Bank's not opened again, I find, for I asked so much at the station.”

”Things couldn't be worse,” said Harriet. ”It's all a smash together.

The house is bankrupt.”

”Lord help us!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Margery.

Harriet let her work fall on the table, and leant her head towards Margery's, her voice dropped to a whisper.

”I say! We have a man in here!”

”In here!” breathlessly rejoined Margery.

Harriet nodded. ”Since last Tuesday. There's one stopping here, and there's another at Ashlydyat. Margery, I declare to you when they were going through the house, them creatures, I felt that sick, I didn't know how to bear it. If I had dared I'd have upset a bucket of boiling water over the lot as they came up the stairs.”

Margery sat, revolving the news, a terribly blank look upon her face.

Harriet resumed.

”We shall all have to leave, every soul of us: and soon, too, we expect.

I don't know about you, you know. I am so sorry for my mistress!”

”Well!” burst forth Margery, giving vent to her indignation; ”_he_ has brought matters to a fine pa.s.s!”

”Meaning master?” asked Harriet.

”Meaning n.o.body else,” was the tart rejoinder.

”He just has,” said Harriet. ”Prior's Ash is saying such things that it raises one's hair to hear them. We don't like to repeat them again, only just among ourselves.”

”What's the drift of 'em?” inquired Margery.

”All sorts of drifts. About his having took and made away with the money in the tills: and those bonds of my Lord Averil's, that there was so much looking after--it was he took them. Who'd have believed it, Margery, of Mr. George G.o.dolphin, with his gay laugh and his handsome face?”

”Better for him if his laugh had been a bit less gay and his face less handsome,” was the sharp remark of Margery. ”He might have been steadier then.”

”Folks talk of the Verralls, and that set, up at Lady G.o.dolphin's Folly,” rejoined Harriet, her voice falling still lower. ”Prior's Ash says he has had too much to do with them, and----”

”I don't want that scandal repeated over to me,” angrily reprimanded Margery. ”Perhaps other people know as much about it as Prior's Ash; they have eyes, I suppose. There's no need for you to bring it up to one's face.”