‘Well, I suppose French governesses have tamed her down, and that she’s pretty stiff and prim by this time,’ said Mrs. Turchill with chilling indifference. ‘No, mother, she is a kind of girl whom no training would ever make conventional. She is thoroughly natural, original even, and doesn’t mind what she says.’ ‘That sounds as if she talked slang,’ said Mrs. Turchill, who, although the kindest of women in her conduct, could be severe of speech on occasion, ‘and of all things I detest slang in a woman. I hope she is industrious. The idleness of the young women of the present day is a crying sin.’ Edgar Turchill seemed hardly to be aware of this last remark. He was polishing the gun-metal industriously with that horrible oily rag which accompanied him everywhere on his muddling mornings at home. ‘She’s accomplished, I suppose,’ speculated Mrs. Turchill—‘plays, and sings, and paints on velvet.’ ‘Ye—es; that’s to say I’m not sure about the velvet,’ answered Edgar faintly, not remembering any special artistic performances of Daphne’s except certain attempts on a drawing-block, which had seemed to him too green and too cloudy to lead to much, and which he had never beheld in an advanced stage. ‘She is awfully fond of reading,’ he added in rather a spasmodic manner, after an interval of silent thought. ‘The poetry she knows would astonish you.’ ‘That would be easy,’ retorted Mrs. Turchill. ‘My father and mother didn’t approve of poetry, and Cowper, Thomson, and Kirke White were the only poets allowed to be read by us girls at old Miss Tompion’s—these ladies are nieces of my Miss Tompion, you know, Edgar.’ ‘How can I help knowing it, mother, when you’ve told me a hundred and fifty times?’ exclaimed her son, more impatiently than his wont. ‘Well, Edgar, my dear, if you’re tired of my conversation—’ ‘No, you dear peppery old party, not a bit. Go on like an old dear as you are. Only I thought you were rather hard upon poor little Daphne just now.’ ‘How can I be hard upon her, when I haven’t seen her for the last three years! Dear, dear, what a small place Leamington was in my time,’ pursued Mrs. Turchill, musing blandly upon the days of her youth; ‘but it was much more select. None of these rich people from Birmingham; none of these Londoners coming down to hunt; but a very superior class—invalids, elderly people who came to drink the waters, and to consult Doctor Jephson.’ ‘It must have been lively,’ murmured Edgar, not deeply interested. ‘It was not lively, Edgar, but it was select,’ corrected Mrs. Turchill with dignity, as she paused with her head on one side to admire the neatness of her own work.