“Mrs Hearn says that Mrs Dale spoke ever so firmly about it, as though determined that nothing should change her.”

“And did she say why?”

“Well, not exactly.  But Mrs Hearn said she could understand there had been words between her and the squire.  It couldn’t be anything else, you know.  Probably it had something to do with that man, Crosbie.”

“They’ll be very pushed about money,” said Mr Boyce, thrusting his feet into his slippers.

“That’s just what I said to Mrs Hearn.  And those girls have never been used to anything like real economy.  What’s to become of them I don’t know;” and Mrs Boyce, as she expressed her sympathy for her dear friends, received considerable comfort from the prospect of their future poverty.  It always is so, and Mrs Boyce was not worse than her neighbours.

“You’ll find they’ll make it up before the time comes,” said Mr Boyce, to whom the excitement of such a change in affairs was almost too good to be true.

“I am afraid not,” said Mrs Boyce; “I’m afraid not.  They are both so determined.  I always thought that riding and giving the girls hats and habits was injurious.  It was treating them as though they were the squire’s daughters, and they were not the squire’s daughters.”

“It was almost the same thing.”

“But now we see the difference,” said the judicious Mrs Boyce.  “I often said that dear Mrs Dale was wrong, and it turns out that I was right.  It will make no difference to me, as regards calling on them and that sort of thing.”

“Of course it won’t.”

“Not but what there must be a difference, and a very great difference too.  It will be a terrible come down for poor Lily, with the loss of her fine husband and all.”

After dinner, when Mr Boyce had again gone forth upon his labours, the same subject was discussed between Mrs Boyce and her daughters, and the mother was very careful to teach her children that Mrs Dale would be just as good a person as ever she had been, and quite as much a lady, even though she should live in a very dingy house at Guestwick; from which lesson the Boyce girls learned plainly that Mrs Dale, with Bell and Lily, were about to have a fall in the world, and that they were to be treated accordingly.

From all this, it will be discovered that Mrs Dale had not given way to the squire’s arguments, although she had found herself unable to answer them.  As she had returned home she had felt herself to be almost vanquished, and had spoken to the girls with the air and tone of a woman who hardly knew in which course lay the line of her duty.  But they had not seen the squire’s manner on the occasion, nor heard his words, and they could not understand that their own purpose should be abandoned because he did not like it.  So they talked their mother into fresh resolves, and on the following morning she wrote a note to her brother-in-law, assuring him that she had thought much of all that he had said, but again declaring that she regarded herself as bound in duty to leave the Small House.  To this he had returned no answer, and she had communicated her intention to Mrs Hearn, thinking it better that there should be no secret in the matter.