"Rhoda and Ethel are a little old for them." "So much the better. Yes; that is a friendship that I think might be helpful to both parties, and I shall do my best to encourage it. I should like to see the Grafton girls thoroughly intimate at Surley Rectory before Mrs. Carruthers comes back. She has behaved so badly to the Coopers that she would be quite likely to prevent it if she were here, out of spite." "Well, I must stand up a _little_ for Mrs. Carruthers," said Mrs. Mercer. "Rhoda and Ethel are good girls, I know, and do a lot of useful work in the parish, but they do like to dominate everything and everybody, and it was hardly to be expected that Mrs. Carruthers in her position would stand it." "I don't agree with you at all," said her husband. "She was a mere girl when she married and came to live at Surley Park; she is hardly more than a girl now. She ought to have been thankful to have their help and advice, as they had practically run the parish for years. Actually to tell them to mind their own business, and practically to turn them out of her house, over that affair of her laundry maid--well, I don't say what I think about it, but I am _entirely_ on the side of Rhoda and Ethel; and so ought you to be." "Well, I know they acted for the best; but after all they _had_ made a mistake. The young man hadn't come after the laundry maid at all." "So it was said; but we needn't discuss it. They were most forgiving, and prepared to be all that was kind and sympathetic when Mrs. Carruthers lost her husband; and how did she return it? Refused to see them, just as she refused to see me when I called on Cooper's behalf--and in my priestly capacity too. No, Gertrude, there is nothing to be said on behalf of Mrs. Carruthers. She is a selfish worldly young woman, and her bereavement, instead of inclining her towards a quiet and sober life, seems to have had just the opposite effect. A widow of hardly more than two years, she goes gadding about all over the place, and behaves just as if her husband's death were a release to her instead of----" "Well, I must say that I think it _was_ rather a release, Albert. Mr. Carruthers had everything to make life happy, as you have often said, but drink was his curse, and if he had not been killed he might have spoilt her life for her. You said that too, you know, at the time."