The Lions Share | Page 2

not
elegance; her accent and turns of speech were noticeably those of Essex.
But she had a magnificent pale forehead; the eyes beneath it sparkled
with energy, inquisitiveness, and sagacity; and the mouth beneath 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