Dr. Sugg looked grave and not a little puzzled. The girl’s frank and childish trust in the master of Rodenham was certainly a charming Platonism, but one that might lead to delicate complications. Richard Jeffray might be a generous young gentleman, and a man of honor, but he had hardly arrived at that patriarchal and convincing age when romantic philanthropy becomes disinterested in the eyes of the world. Bess Grimshaw’s spirit pleased the old gentleman not a little. He was a born sportsman as well as a Christian, and was honestly concerned for the girl’s future.
“What’s your age, my dear?” he asked, settling his wig and brushing the snuff from his waistcoat.
“Can you milk and cook and use your needle?”
Bess smiled and confessed to all these accomplishments.
“I would serve in a farm-house,” she said, “to get myself an honest home.”
Dr. Sugg appeared to be pondering the matter with all the gravity he could gather. That he was justified in abetting the girl’s frank spirit of independence he had no doubt at all. Besides, his efforts on her behalf could not fail to please Richard Jeffray should that gentleman recover.
“Listen to me, my dear,” he said, at length. “Farmer Pelham, of Beechhurst, needs a girl. He is an honest fellow, and his wife is a kindly body. Supposing I take my nag and see about the place for you?”
Bess looked as though she were ready to embrace Dr. Sugg and his proposal at one and the same moment.
“I should bless the chance, sir,” she said.
Dr. Sugg twinkled and patted the girl’s shoulder.
“You leave it to me, my dear,” he said. “I like your honesty and the way you have trusted me. It is a pleasure to help those who are willing to help themselves. You can make yourself comfortable at the rectory for the day; my daughter Mary will make you welcome. There, give me a kiss, my dear, to show your good feeling.”
And Bess kissed the old gentleman, a display of gratitude that might have shocked most grievously the more straitlaced of Dr. Sugg’s parishioners.
Mary Sugg assumed an air of mild and genteel hauteur when her father brought Bess into the parlor and desired his daughter to exercise his hospitality in the girl’s behalf. Like many plain and pious young women, Mary Sugg was inclined to view beauty with suspicion and to make of virtue a Madonna of Ugliness. She conceived it to be distinctly indiscreet of her father to introduce a strange girl into the house, especially when Janet and Sarah, the housemaid and the cook, had fled the place because of the small-pox. Mary Sugg atoned for her grimness, however, by being the possessor of a kind heart and a sympathetic nature. She made Bess a gracious little courtesy, and looked shyly at the girl, who was gazing round the parlor, with its solid Dutch furniture, its bookshelves, and its prints. A tall clock ticked sententiously beside the door. The chintz-curtained windows looked out upon the lawn and flower-beds, where Dr. Sugg’s daffodils and crocuses were in bloom.