“He has his uses, but I cannot bear him.  I don’t know who is to blame—­whether it is Miss Wort or Lady Latimer—­but there is no peace at Beechhurst now for begging.  They have plenty of money, and little enough to do with it.  I call giving the greatest of luxuries, but, bless you! giving is not all charity.  Miss Wort spends a fortune in eleemosynary physic to half poison poor folks; Lady Latimer indulges herself in a variety of freaks:  her last was a mechanical leg for old Bumpus, who had been happy on a wooden peg for forty years; we were all asked to subscribe, and he doesn’t thank us for it.  As soon as one thing is done with, up starts another that we are entreated to be interested in—­things we don’t care about one bit.  Old Phipps protests that it is vanity and busy-bodyism.  I hope I shall never grow so hard-hearted as to see a poor soul want and not help her, but I hate to be canvassed for alms on behalf of other people’s benevolent objects—­don’t you?”

“It has never happened to me.  I remember that my father used to appeal to Lady Latimer and Miss Wort when his poor patients had not fit diet.  Lady Latimer was his chief Lady Bountiful.”

“That may be true, but it is possible to have too much of a good thing.  I love fair play.  The schools, now—­they were very good schools before ever she came into the Forest; yes, as far back as your father’s time, Bessie Fairfax—­and yet, to hear the way in which she is belauded by a certain set, one might suppose that she had been the making of them.  But it is the same all the world over—­a hundred hands do the work, and one name gets all the praise!” Miss Buff was growing warm over her reminiscences, but catching the spark of mischief in Bessie’s eyes, she laughed, and added with great candor:  “Yes, I confess there is a spice of rivalry between us, but I am very fond of her all the same.”

“Oh yes.  She loves to rule, but then she has the talent,” pleaded Bessie.

“No, my dear, there you are mistaken.  She is too fussy; she irritates people.  But for the old admiral she would often get into difficulties.  Beechhurst has taken to ladies’ meetings and committees, and all sorts of fudge that she is the moving spirit of.  I often wish we were back in the quiet, times when dear old Hutton was rector, and would not let her be always interfering.  I suppose it comes of this new doctrine of the equality of the sexes; but I say they never will be equal till women consent to be frights.  It gives a man an immense pull over us to clap on his hat without mounting up stairs to the looking-glass:  while we are getting ready to go and do a thing, he has gone and done it.  You hear Lady Latimer’s name at every turn, but the old admiral is the backbone of Beechhurst, as he always was, and old Phipps is his right hand.”

“And Mr. Musgrave and my father?” queried Bessie.

“They do their part, but it is so unobtrusively that one forgets them; but they would be missed if they were not there.  Mr. Musgrave has a great deal of influence amongst his own class—­the farmers and those people.  Of course, you have heard how wonderfully his son is getting on at college?  Oh, my dear, what a stir there was about his running over to Normandy after you!”