Presently they heard some feet enter the outer shop, and Mrs.

Duncombe's voice asking for Mr. Pettitt; while his mother replied that he would wait on her immediately, but that he was just now engaged with the Honourable Mr. De Lancey. "Could she show them anything?"

"Oh no, thank you, we'll wait! Don't let us keep you, Mrs. Pettitt, it is only on business."

"Ay!" said the other voice--female, and entirely untamed. "He's your great ally about your gutters and drains, isn't he?"

"The only landowner in Wil'sbro' who has a particle of public spirit!" said Mrs. Duncombe.

Whereat good-natured Lady Rosamond could not but smile congratulation to the hair-cutter, who looked meekly elevated, while Tom whispered, "Proverb contradicted."

But the other voice replied, "Of course--he's a perfumer, learned in smells! You'd better drop it, Bessie! you'll never make anything of it."

"I'll never drop what the health and life of hundreds of my fellow- creatures depend on! I wish I could make you understand, Gussie!"

"You'll never do anything with my governor, if that's your hope--you should hear him and the mum talking! 'It's all nonsense,' he says; 'I'm not going to annoy my tenants, and make myself unpopular, just to gratify a fashionable cry.' 'Well,' says mumsey, 'it is not what was thought the thing for ladies in my time; but you see, if Gussie goes along with it, she will have the key to all the best county society.' 'Bother the county society!' says I. 'Bessie Duncombe's jolly enough--but such a stuck-up set as they all are at Compton, I'll not run after, behaving so ill to the governor, too!' However--"

"There's a proverb about listeners!" said Rosamond, emerging when she felt as if she ought to hearken no longer, and finding Mrs.

Duncombe leaning with her back to the counter, and a tall girl, a few degrees from beauty, in a riding-habit, sitting upon it.

They both laughed; and the girl added, "If you had waited a moment, Lady Rosamond, you would have heard that you were the only jolly one of all the b'iling!"

"Ah! we shall see where you are at the end of Mrs. Tallboys'

lectures!" said Mrs. Duncombe.

"On what?" asked Rosamond. "Woman's rights, or sanitary measures?

for I can't in the least understand why they should be coupled up together."

"Nor I!" said Miss Moy. "I don't see why we shouldn't have our own way, just as well as the men; but what that has to do with drains and gutters, I can't guess."

"I'm the other way," said Rosamond. "I think houses and streets ought to be made clean and healthy; but as for woman's rule, I fancy we get more of it now than we should the other way."

"As an instance," said Mrs. Duncombe, "woman is set on cleansing Wil'sbro'. Man will not stir. Will it ever be done till woman has her way?"

"Perhaps, if woman would be patient, man would do it in the right way, instead of the wrong!" quoth Rosamond.

"Patient! No, indeed! Nothing is to be done by that! Let every woman strive her utmost to get the work done as far as her powers go, and the crusade will be accomplished for very shame!"

Just then Tom, looking highly amused, emerged, followed by Mr.

Pettitt, the only enlightened landlord on whom Mrs. Duncombe had been able to produce the slightest impression. He had owned a few small tenements in Water Lane, which he was about to rebuild, and which were evidently the pivot of operations.

At the door they met Cecil, and Rosamond detained her a moment in the street to say, "My dear Cecil, is _that_ Miss Moy coming on Wednesday?"

"Of course she is. We greatly want to move her father. He has the chief house property there."

"It is too late now," said Rosamond; "but do you think it can be pleasant to Jenny Bowater to meet her?"

"I know nothing of the old countrified animosities and gossipings, which you have so heartily adopted," replied Cecil, proudly.

"Firstly, I ignore them as beneath me; secondly, I sacrifice them all to a great cause. If Miss Bowater does not like my guests, let her stay away."

Here Mrs. Duncombe stood on the step, crying out, "Well, Cecil, how have you sped with Mrs. Bungay?"

"Horrid woman!" and no more was heard, as Cecil entered Mr.

Pettitt's establishment.

"That might be echoed," said Tom, who was boiling over at the speech to his sister. "I knew that ape was an intolerable little prig of a peacock, but I didn't think she could be such a brute to you, Rosie!

Is she often like that, and does your parson stand such treatment of you?"

"Nonsense, Tom!" said Rosamond; "it doesn't often happen, and breaks no bones when it does. It's only the ignorance of the woman, and small blame to her--as Mrs. M'Kinnon said when Corporal Sims's wife threw the red herring's tail at her!"

"But does Julius stand it?" repeated Tom, fiercely, as if hesitating whether to call out Julius or Mrs. Charnock Poynsett.

"Don't be so ridiculous, Tom! I'd rather stand a whole shower of red herrings' tails at once than bother Julius about his brother's wife. How would you and Terry like it, if your wives took to squabbling, and setting you together by the ears? I was demented enough to try it once, but I soon saw it was worse than anything."

"What? He took her part?"

"No such thing! Hold your tongue, Tommy, and don't talk of married folk till you're one yourself!"

"Papa never meant it," repeated the indignant Tom. "I've a great mind to write and tell him how you are served!"

"Now, Tom," cried Rosamond, stopping short, "if you do that, I solemnly declare I'll never have you here again! What could papa do? Do you think he could cure Raymond's wife of being a ridiculous little prig? And if he could--why, before your letter got to Meerut, she will be gone up to London; and by the time she comes back we'll be safe in our own Rectory. Here, come in, and get our string and basket at Mrs. Bungay's."

"I'll pay her out!" muttered Tom, as he followed his sister into Mrs. Bungay's shop, one of much smaller pretensions, for the sale of baskets, brushes, mats, &c.

The mistress, a stout, red-faced woman, looked as if she had been 'speaking a bit of her mind,' and was at first very gruff and ungracious, until she found they were real customers; and moreover, Tom's bland Irish courtesy perfectly disarmed her, when Rosamond, having fixed her mind on a box in the very topmost pigeon-hole, they not only apologized for the trouble they were giving, but Tom offered to climb up and bring it down, when she was calling for the errand-boy in vain.

"It's no trouble, sir, thank you; I'd think nothing of that for you, my lady, nor for Mr. Charnock--which I'm sure I'll never forget all he did for us at the fire, leading my little Alferd out like a lamb!

I beg your ladyship's pardon, ma'am, if I seemed a bit hasty; but I've been so put about--and I thought at first you'd come in on the same matter, which I'm sure a lady like you wouldn't ever do--about the drains, and such like, which isn't fit for no lady to speak of!

As if Water Lane weren't as sweet and clean as it has any call to be, and as if we didn't know what was right by our tenants, which are a bad lot, and don't merit no money to be laid out on them!"

"So you have houses in Water Lane, Mrs. Bungay? I didn't even know it!"

"Yes, Lady Rosamond! My husband and I thought there was no better investment than to buy a bit of land, when the waste was inclosed, and run 'em up cheap. Houses always lets here, you see, and the fire did no damage to that side. But of course you didn't know, Lady Rosamond; a real lady like you wouldn't go prying into what she's no call to, like that fine decked-out body Duncombe's wife, which had best mind her own children, which it is a shame to see stravaging about the place! I know it's her doing, which I told young Mrs. Charnock Poynsett just now, which I'm right sorry to see led along by the like of her, and so are more of us; and we all wish some friend would give her a hint, which she is but young--and 'tis doing harm to Mr. Charnock Poynsett, Lady Rosamond, which all of us have a regard for, as is but right, having been a good customer, and friend to the town, and all before him; but we can't have ladies coming in with their fads and calling us names for not laying out on what's no good to nobody, just to satisfy them! As if Wil'sbro'

hadn't been always healthy!"

Tom was wicked enough to put in a good many notes of sympathy, at the intervals of the conjunctive whiches, and to end by declaring, "Quite right, Mrs. Bungay! You see how much better we've brought up my sister! I say--what's the price of that little doll's broom?"

"What do you want of it, Tom?"

"Never you mind!"

"No mischief, I hope?"

CHAPTER XVII The Enchantments

"It seems a shame," the Walrus said, "To play them such a trick, After we've brought them out so far, And made them trot so quick."