Dorcas also looked pre-occupied, the truth being that she had
asked a few young people, officers and maidens of the place (alas! as
it chanced, among them were no clergy or their wives and daughters), to
play tennis that afternoon and some of them to stop to supper. Now she
was wondering how her austere spouse would take the news. He might
be cross and lecture her; when he was both cross and lectured the
combination was not agreeable.
A few formal enquiries as to health and a certain sick person were made
and answered. Dorcas assured him that they were both quite well, Tabitha
especially, and that she had visited the afflicted woman as directed.
"And how was she, dear?" he asked.
"I don't know, dear," she answered. "You see, when I got to the house
I met Mrs. Tomley, the Rector's wife, at the door, and she said, rather
pointedly I thought, that she and her husband were looking after the
case, and though grateful for the kind assistance you had rendered, felt
that they need not trouble us any more, as the patient was a parishioner
of theirs."
"Did they?" said Thomas with a frown. "Considering all things--well, let
it be."
Dorcas was quite content to do so, for she was aware that her husband's
good-heartedness was apt to be interpreted as poaching by some who
should have known better, and that in fact the ground was dangerous.
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