“I don’t see any harm could come of it, even if no good did,” she replied, after a pause. “I’ll sound Medora. She’d be glad to do Kellock a turn, naturally.”
“I hope she still feels confident about Kellock. I can’t say she spoke with great warmth about the man last time I met her; but that was a passing cloud, I expect. He’s going to give a lecture, and set the world right, at Totnes, presently, he tells me. I’ve promised to be there.”
When some hours later, Mrs. Trivett started to take tea with her daughter, Medora met her by the river, and revealed a restless and melancholy mood.
“Well, what’s the best news with you, my dear?” she asked.
“There’s no best,” she answered. “We’re just waiting, and I’m ageing and growing into a fright before my time.”
“The typewriter’s come, Jordan tells me.”
“Yes; it’s come. I’m writing out his speech. But the minute I’ve made a clean sheet, he alters it all and messes it about. It’s getting on his nerves, I believe, and I’ll swear it’s getting on mine. I don’t hear anything else, morning, noon, and night.”
“Yes; he can’t think of more than one thing at a time, Jordan can’t. I’m just a machine now, like the typewriter. I told him yesterday I didn’t hold with some of his opinions about labour, and he couldn’t have been more surprised if the typewriter had spoken to him.”
“I shouldn’t argue about his views if I was you, Medora. They’re his life, in a manner of speaking.”
“I shall argue about ’em if I choose. He’d think no better of me if I humbly said ditto to all he says. He goes a lot too far, and he’d take the shirts off the backs of the rich, if he could. He reads it over and over, and I very near stamp sometimes. Nothing will ever make me a socialist now. I dare say I might have been if he’d gone about it different; but now now. And, anyway, I’m not going to be the echo to Jordan, just because he takes it for granted I must be.”
“He has, but he wants to beat down the rent a bit. He’s afraid of his life that Dingle’s going to have his savings out of him.”
“That’s as may be. I dare say he’ll do no such thing. It wouldn’t be like Ned.”
“Life’s properly dreadful for me—that’s all I know about it.”
“I dare say it is. You’ve got to wait the will of other people now, Medora; and it’s a thing you never much liked doing.”