The Lions Share | Page 2

the eyes showed by its sardonic dropping corners that she had come to a settled, cheerful conclusion about human nature, and that the conclusion was not flattering. Miss Ingate was a Guardian of the Poor, and the Local Representative of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Association. She had studied intimately the needy and the rich and the middling. She was charitable without illusions; and, while adhering to every social convention, she did so with a toleration pleasantly contemptuous; in her heart she had no mercy for snobs of any kind, though, unfortunately, she was at times absurdly intimidated by them--at other times she was not.
To the west, within a radius of twelve miles, she knew everybody and everybody knew her; to the east her fame was bounded only by the regardless sea. She and her ancestors had lived in the village of Moze as long as even Mr. Mathew Moze and his ancestors. In the village, and to the village, she was Miss Ingate, a natural phenomenon, like the lie of the land and the river Moze. Her opinions offended nobody, not Mr. Moze himself--she was Miss Ingate. She was laughed at, beloved and respected. Her sagacity had one flaw, and the flaw sprang from her sincere conviction that human nature in that corner of Essex, which she understood so profoundly, and where she was so perfectly at home, was different from, and more fondly foolish than, human nature in any other part of the world. She could not believe that distant populations could be at once so pathetically and so naughtily human as the population in and around Moze.
If Audrey disdained Miss Ingate, it was only because Miss Ingate was neither young nor fair nor the proprietress of some man, and because people made out that she was peculiar. In some respects Audrey looked upon Miss Ingate as a life-belt, as the speck of light at the end of a tunnel, as the enigmatic smile which glimmers always in the frown of destiny.
"Well?" cried Miss Ingate in her rather shrill voice, grinning sardonically, with the corners of her lips still lower than usual in anticipatory sarcasm. It was as if she had said: "You cannot surprise me by any narrative of imbecility or turpitude or bathos. All the same, I am dying to hear the latest eccentricity of this village."
"Well?" parried Audrey, holding one hand behind her.
They did not shake hands. People who call at ten o'clock in the morning cannot expect to have their hands shaken. Miss Ingate certainly expected nothing of the sort. She had the freedom of Flank Hall, as of scores of other houses, at all times of day. Servants opened front doors for her with a careless smile, and having shut front doors they left her loose, like a familiar cat, to find what she wanted. They seldom "showed" her into any room, nor did they dream of acting before her the unconvincing comedy of going to "see" whether masters or mistresses were out or in.
"Where's your mother?" asked Miss Ingate idly, quite sure that interesting divulgations would come, and quite content to wait for them. She had been out of the village for over a week.
"Mother's taking her acetyl salicylic," Audrey answered, coming to the door of the study.
This meant merely that Mrs. Moze had a customary attack of the neuralgia for which the district is justly renowned among strangers.
"Oh!" murmured Miss Ingate callously. Mrs. Moze, though she had lived in the district for twenty-five years, did not belong to it. If she chose to keep on having neuralgia, that was her affair, but in justice to natives and to the district she ought not to make too much of it, and she ought to admit that it might well be due to her weakness after her operation. Miss Ingate considered the climate to be the finest in England; which it was, on the condition that you were proof against neuralgia.
"Father's gone to Colchester in the car to see the Bishop," Audrey coldly added.
"If I'd known he was going to Colchester I should have asked him for a lift," said Miss Ingate, with determination.
"Oh, yes! He'd have taken _you!_" said Audrey, reserved. "I suppose you had fine times in London!"
"Oh! It was vehy exciting! It was vehy exciting!" Miss Ingate agreed loudly.
"Father wouldn't let me read about it in the paper," said Audrey, still reserved. "He never will, you know. But I did!"
"Oh! But you didn't read about me playing the barrel organ all the way down Regent Street, because that wasn't in any of the papers."
"You _didn't!_" Audrey protested, with a sudden dark smile.
"Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. And vehy tiring it was. Vehy tiring indeed. It's quite an art to turn a barrel organ. If you don't