There were exceptions, of course. Miss McDougall stood up for her friend, as she said, albeit with some admixture of Mrs. Smith's judicial tendency to blame everybody all round, and a personal disposition towards spitefulness. Minnie Bodkin said very little when the subject was mentioned in her presence; but when an opinion was forced from her, she did not deliver it entirely in favour of Algernon. She was sorry for his wife, she said. And nine-tenths of her hearers would retort with raised hands and eyes, that they, for their part, were sorry for the young man, and that they could not understand what dear Minnie found to pity in Mrs. Algernon Errington. "A woman who spies on her husband, my dear! Who condescends to open his letters--how a woman can so degrade herself is a mystery to me! And they say she actually follows him about the street at nights--skulks after him! Oh! it is almost too bad to repeat!" "I don't know that all that is true. But if it be so, it seems to me that there is great cause for pity," Minnie would reply. And the answer was set down to poor dear Miss Bodkin's eccentricity. There had been, for some time back, a talk of carelessness and mismanagement at the Whitford Post-office. Then Roger Heath made no secret of his loss, and was not soft-hearted or mild in his manner of speaking of it. He complained aloud, and spared nobody. And there were plenty of voices ready to carry his denunciations through all classes of Whitford society. It was very strange! Such a thing as the loss of a money-letter had been almost unknown during the reign of the late postmaster; and now there was, not one case, but two--three--a dozen! The number increased, as it passed from mouth to mouth, at a wonderful rate. There must be great negligence (to say the least of it) somewhere in the Whitford Post-office. If the present postmaster was too much above his business to look after it properly, it was a pity his high friends didn't remove him to some situation better suited to such a fine gentleman! To be sure he was worried out of his wits by that woman. It really was true that she haunted the office at all hours. She had been seen slipping out of the private door in the entry. She was even said to have a pass key which enabled her to go in and out at her will. Was it not rumoured on very good authority that she had actually gone to the office alone, in the dead of night? What could she want to be always prowling about there for? It was all very well to say she went to spy on her husband, but if things went wrong in the office in consequence of her spyings, it became a public evil. Anyway, it was most extraordinary and unheard-of behaviour, and somebody ought to take the matter up! This latter somewhat vague suggestion was a favourite climax to gossip on the subject of the Algernon Erringtons.