Larry made his way down into the parlour with hopes considerably raised.  There he found Mrs. Masters and when he told her what had passed she assured him that the thing was as good as settled.  Everybody knew, she said, that when a girl doubted she meant to yield.  And what were two months?  The time would have nearly gone by the end of her visit to Cheltenham.  It was now early in December, and they might be married and settled at home before the end of April.  Mrs. Masters, to give him courage, took out a bottle of currant wine and drank his health, and told him that in three months’ time she would give him a kiss and call him her son.  And she believed what she said.  This, she thought, was merely Mary’s way of letting herself down without a sudden fall.

Then the attorney came in and also congratulated him.  When the attorney was told that Mary had taken two months for her decision he also felt that the matter was almost as good as settled.  This at any rate was clear to him,—­that the existing misery of his household would for the present cease, and that Mary would be allowed to go upon her visit without further opposition.  He at present did not think it wise to say another word to Mary about the young man; nor would Mrs. Masters condescend to do so.  Mary would of course now accept her lover like any other girl, and had been such a fool,—­so thought Mrs. Masters,—­that she had thoroughly deserved to lose him.

CHAPTER XXVII

“Wonderful Bird!”

There were but two days between the scenes described in the last chapter and the day fixed for Mary’s departure, and during these two days Larry Twentyman’s name was not mentioned in the house.  Mrs. Masters did not make herself quite pleasant to her stepdaughter, having still some grudge against her as to the twenty pounds.  Nor, though she had submitted to the visit to Cheltenham, did she approve of it.  It wasn’t the way, she said, to make such a girl as Mary like her life at Chowton Farm, going and sitting and doing nothing in old Lady Ushant’s drawing-room.  It was cocking her up with gimcrack notions about ladies till she’d be ashamed to look at her own hands after she had done a day’s work with them.  There was no doubt some truth in this.  The woman understood the world and was able to measure Larry Twentyman and Lady Ushant and the rest of them.  Books and pretty needlework and easy conversation would consume the time at Cheltenham, whereas at Chowton Farm there would be a dairy and a poultry yard,—­under difficulties on account of the foxes,—­with a prospect of baby linen and children’s shoes and stockings.  It was all that question of gentlemen and ladies, and of non-gentlemen and non-ladies!  They ought, Mrs. Masters thought, to be kept distinct.  She had never, she said, wanted to put her finger into a pie that didn’t belong to her.  She had never tried to be a grand lady.  But Mary was perilously near the brink on either side, and as it was to be her lucky fate at last to sit down to a plentiful but work-a-day life at Chowton Farm she ought to have been kept away from the maundering idleness of Lady Ushant’s lodgings at Cheltenham.  But Mary heard nothing of this during these two days, Mrs. Masters bestowing the load of her wisdom upon her unfortunate husband.