in. She met that terrible lady
so smartly on one occasion that she retired, worsted, for the afternoon,
and the bride drove triumphantly round the place, and called on all her
friends, looking as soft as a Chinchilla muff, and dropping at every
bungalow the tale of something that Mrs. Minchin had said, by no means
to the advantage of the inmates.

It was in this way that Aunt Theresa came to know what Mrs. Minchin had
said about her wearing half-mourning for my father and mother. That she
knew better than to go into deep black, which is trying to indefinite
complexions, but was equal to any length of grief in those lavenders,
and delicate combinations of black and white, which are so becoming to
everybody, especially to people who are not quite so young as they have
been.

In the warmth of her own indignation at these unwarrantable remarks, and
of the bride's ready sympathy, Aunt Theresa felt herself in candour
bound to reveal what Mrs. Minchin had told her about the bride's having
sold a lot of her wedding presents at the sale for fancy prices; they
being new-fashioned ornaments, and so forth, not yet to be got at the
station.

The result of this general information all round was, of course, a
quarrel between Mrs. Minchin and nearly every lady in the regiment. The
bride had not failed to let "the Colonel's lady" know what Mrs. Minchin
thought of her going home in the troop-ship, and had made a call upon
the Quartermaster's wife for the pleasure of making her acquainted with
Mrs. Minchin's warm wish that the regiment had been ordered home three
months sooner, when Mrs. Curling and the too numerous little Curlings
would not have been entitled to intrude upon the ladies' cabin.

And yet, strange to say, before we were half-way to England, Mrs.
Minchin was friendly once more with all but the bride; and the bride was
at enmity with every lady on board. The truth is, Mrs. Minchin, though a
gossip of the deepest dye, was kind-hearted, after a fashion. Her
restless energy, which chiefly expended itself in petty social plots,
and the fomentation of quarrels, was not seldom employed also in
practical kindness towards those who happened to be in favour with her.
She was really interested--for good or for evil--in those with whose
affairs she meddled, and if she was a dangerous enemy, and a yet more
dangerous friend, she was neither selfish nor illiberal.

The bride, on the other hand, had no real interest whatever in anybody