"Very kind of him, I'm sure," said Miss Watling, "and she owes them so much."
"I think the debt is the other way," suggested Mrs. Barford. "Dorothy has repaid them a thousandfold. She has been a little fortune to them, and, besides her clothes, she receives no payment for her services. As to Gilbert marrying a lady of fortune, it may be true, it may not; these stories are always exaggerated. You all know that a great heap of chaff only contains a third of wheat."
"I have no doubt it's true," cried Letty. "I allers thought Gilly Rushmere a right handsome feller."
"I don't agree with you there, Mrs. Joseph," returned Miss Watling, to whom the grapes had become doubly sour, "he was too red and white to please my taste. His nose was turned up, and his hair decidedly carrotty."
The other women looked down in their laps and tittered; the same thought was uppermost in all their minds.
Mrs. Joe, who had no delicacy, and hated Nancy Watling, burst into a rude laugh, and gave utterance to her's with the greatest bluntness.
"All the parish said that you were over head and ears in love with Gilbert, Nancy; that you made him an offer of marriage yourself; and that he refused you point blank, for Dorothy Chance. Remember, I don't say it's true, but for all that I heard it, and that you have hated both of them like pison ever since."
Miss Watling rose indignantly from her seat; her stiff black silk gown rustling ominously; her skinny bony hand extended towards the insolent speaker in defiance, her small bugle eyes eating her up with scorn. For a moment her rage was too great for words; her wrath almost choked her. The ferocious glare fell harmlessly upon little plump Letty, who continued to stuff her boy with rich plum cake. She meant to anger Miss Watling, and secretly enjoyed her discomfiture.
"You insignificant, vulgar thing," at length hissed out the offended lady. "How dare you insinuate such vile stories against my character? Who and what are you, that you open your mouth against me? Every one knows the situation you were in, when Mr. Joseph married you, which he did to make an honest woman of you, and by so doing disgraced himself. If I did not respect him and his mother, I would order you out of my house, I would, I would, I would!"
