ll sorts of things. But now I _know_ this one's
untrue I should never _dream_ of believing it. Not for one moment."

Sally felt inclined to pinch, bite, or otherwise maltreat the
speaker, so very worthless did her offer of optional disbelief seem,
and, indeed, so very offensive. But her inclination only went the
length of wondering how she could get at a vulnerable point through
so much fat.

"Tishy quarrels with her mother, I _know_," said she. "But as to her
doing anything like _that_! Besides, she never told me. Besides, I
should have been asked to the wedding. Besides," etcetera.

For, you see, what this elderly lady had asked the truth about was,
had or had not Laetitia Wilson and Julius Bradshaw been privately
married six months ago? Probably, during aeons and epochs of knitting,
she had dreamed that some one had told her this. Or, even more
probably, she had invented it on the spot, to see what change she
could get out of Sally. She knew that Sally, prudently exasperated,
would give tongue; whereas conciliatory, cosy inquisition--the right
way to approach the elderly gossip--would only make her reticent. Now
it was only necessary to knit, and Sally would be sure to develop
the subject. The line she appeared to take was that it was a horrible
shame of people to say such things, in view of the fact that it was
only yesterday that Tishy had quite settled that rash matrimony in
defiance of her parents would not only be inexcusable but wrong. Sally
laid a fiery emphasis on the only-ness of yesterday, and seemed to
imply that, had it been a week ago, there would have been much more
plausibility in the story of this secret nuptial of six months back.

"Besides," she went on, accumulating items of refutation, "Julius has
only his salary, and Tishy has nothing--though, of course, she could
teach. Besides, Julius has his mother and sister, and they have only
a hundred and fifty a year. It does as long as they all live together.
But it wouldn't do if Julius married." On which the old Goody (Sally
told her mother after) embarked on a long analysis of how joint
housekeeping could be managed if Tishy would consent to be absorbed
into the Bradshaw household. She made rather a grievance of it that
Sally could not supply data of the sleeping accommodation at Georgiana
Terrace, Bayswater. If she had known that, she could have got them
all billeted on different rooms. As it was, she had to be content
to enlarge on the many econ