‘It is half-past six now,’ said Miss Linnet, looking at her watch as the servant appeared with the tea-tray. ‘I suppose the delegates are come back by this time. If Mr. Tryan had not so kindly promised to call and let us know, I should hardly rest without walking to Milby myself to know what answer they have brought back. It is a great privilege for us, Mr. Tryan living at Mrs. Wagstaff’s, for he is often able to take us on his way backwards and forwards into the town.’ ‘I wonder if there’s another man in the world who has been brought up as Mr. Tryan has, that would choose to live in those small close rooms on the common, among heaps of dirty cottages, for the sake of being near the poor people,’ said Mrs. Pettifer. ‘I’m afraid he hurts his health by it; he looks to me far from strong.’ ‘Ah,’ said Miss Pratt, ‘I understand he is of a highly respectable family indeed, in Huntingdonshire. I heard him myself speak of his father’s carriage--quite incidentally, you know--and Eliza tells me what very fine cambric handkerchiefs he uses. My eyes are not good enough to see such things, but I know what breeding is as well as most people, and it is easy to see that Mr. Tryan is quite _comme il faw_, to use a French expression.’ ‘I should like to tell him better nor use fine cambric i’ this place, where there’s such washing, it’s a shame to be seen,’ said Mrs. Linnet; ‘he’ll get ’em tore to pieces. Good lawn ’ud be far better. I saw what a colour his linen looked at the sacrament last Sunday. Mary’s making him a black silk case to hold his bands, but I told her she’d more need wash ’em for him.’ ‘O mother!’ said Rebecca, with solemn severity, ‘pray don’t think of pocket-handkerchiefs and linen, when we are talking of such a man. And at this moment, too, when he is perhaps having to bear a heavy blow. We have more need to help him by prayer, as Aaron and Hur held up the hands of Moses. We don’t know but wickedness may have triumphed, and Mr. Prendergast may have consented to forbid the lecture. There have been dispensations quite as mysterious, and Satan is evidently putting forth all his strength to resist the entrance of the Gospel into Milby Church.’ ‘You niver spoke a truer word than that, my dear,’ said Mrs. Linnet, who accepted all religious phrases, but was extremely rationalistic in her interpretation; ‘for if iver Old Harry appeared in a human form, it’s that Dempster. It was all through him as we got cheated out o’ Pye’s Croft, making out as the title wasn’t good. Such lawyer’s villany! As if paying good money wasn’t title enough to anything. If your father as is dead and gone had been worthy to know it! But he’ll have a fall some day, Dempster will. Mark my words.’