“Thank you: I must not be so extravagant at present. May I look at something which will do for walking? You would not, I suppose, make a walking-dress for Langborough exactly as you would have made it in London?”
“If you mean for walking about the roads here, it would differ slightly from one which would be suitable for London.”
“Will you show me what you have usually made for town?”
Mrs. Bingham was baffled but not defeated. She gave an order for a walking-dress, and hoped that Mrs. Fairfax might be more communicative.
“It is rather a risk if you are unknown.”
“Perhaps you have been exempt from risks: some people are obliged constantly to encounter them.”
“‘Exempt,’ ‘encounter,”’ thought Mrs. Bingham: “she must have been to a good school.”
“On Friday,” and Mrs. Fairfax opened the door.
As Mrs. Bingham went out she noticed a French book lying on a side table.
The day following was Sunday, and Mrs. Fairfax and her daughter were at church. They sat at the back, and all the congregation turned on entering, looked at them, and thought about them during the service. They went out as soon as it was over, but Mrs. Harrop, wife of the ironmonger, and Mrs. Cobb, wife of the coal merchant, escaped with equal promptitude and were close behind them.
“There isn’t a crease in that body,” said Mrs. Harrop.
On Monday Mrs. Bingham was at the post-office. She took care to be there at the dinner hour, when the postmaster’s wife generally came to the counter.
“A newcomer, Mrs. Carter. Have you seen Mrs. Fairfax?”
The door between the office and the parlour was open.
“I’ve no doubt she will have, ma’am, if her business succeeds.”
“I wonder where she lived before she came here. It is curious, isn’t it, that nobody knows her? Did you ever notice how her letters are stamped?”
Mrs. Carter shut the parlour door. “The smell of those onions,” she whispered to her husband, “blows right in here.” She then altered her tone a trifle.
“One of ’em, Mrs. Bingham, had the Portsmouth postmark on it; but this is in the strictest confidence, and I should never dream of letting it out to anybody but you, but I don’t mind you, because I know you won’t repeat it, and if my husband was to hear me he’d be in a fearful rage, for there was a dreadful row when I told Lady Caroline at Thaxton Manor about the letters Miss Margaret was getting, and it was found out that it was me as told her, and some gentleman in London wrote to the Postmaster-General about it.”