Not she! She
meant elucidation, and nothing short of bayonets would stop her.

"Well, really, perhaps I'm making it of too much importance to talk
of breaches of confidence. After all, it only amounts to a gentleman
having been disappointed. Of course, his relations would ... don't
you see?..."

"Was it some man that was after Tishy?" asked Rosalind, wondering
how many more rejected suitors were wearing the willow about the
haberdasher's bride. She had heard of one, only last night. She was
not putting two and two together.

"I dare say everybody knows it, and it's only my nonsensical caution.
But one does get _so_ timorous of saying anything. _You_ know, dear
Mrs. Fenwick! However, it's better to say it out now--of course, quite
between ourselves, you know. It was Mrs. Samuel Herrick's son, Sir
Charles Penderfield. He's the present baronet, you know. Father was
in the army--rather distinguished man, I fancy. Her second husband was
a clergyman...." Here followed social analysis, some of which Rosalind
could have corrected. The speaker floundered a little among county
families, and then resumed the main theme. "Mrs. Herrick is a sort of
connexion of my husband's (I don't exactly know what; but then, I
never _do_ know--family is such a bore), and it was _she_ told _him_
all about this. I always forget these things when they're told _me_.
But I can quite understand that the young man's mother, in speaking
of it ... _you_ understand?..."

"Oh, of course, naturally. I think my daughter's coming out. I saw her
machine-door move." Rosalind began collecting herself for departure.

"But, of course, you won't repeat any of this--but, of course, I know
I can rely upon you--but, of course, it doesn't really matter...."
A genial superior tone of toleration for mankind's foibles as seen by
the two speakers from an elevation comes in at this point juicily. It
meets an appreciative response in the prolonged first syllable of
Rosalind's "_Cer_tainly. I never should dream," etc., whose length
makes up for an imperfect finish--a dispersal of context from which
a farewell good-morning emerges clear, hand-in-hand with a false
statement that the speaker has enjoyed sitting there talking.

Rosalind had not enjoyed it at all. She was utilising the merpussy's
return to land as a means of escape, because, had there been no Mrs.
Arkwright, and no folk-chatter, Sally would have come scranching up
the shingle, and flung herself down beside h