Two

I
I am not going to pretend that the arrival of our anonymous letter did notleave a nasty taste in the mouth. It did. At the same time, it soon passedout of my mind. I did not, you see, at that point, take it seriously. I think Iremember saying to myself that these things probably happen fairly oftenin out-of-the-way villages. Some hysterical woman with a taste for dramat-izing herself was probably at the bottom of it. Anyway, if the letters wereas childish and silly as the one we had got, they couldn’t do much harm.

The next incident, if I may put it so, occurred about a week later, whenPartridge, her lips set tightly together, informed me that Beatrice, the dailyhelp, would not be coming today.

“I gather, sir,” said Partridge, “that the girl has been Upset.”

I was not very sure what Partridge was implying, but I diagnosed(wrongly) some stomachic trouble to which Partridge was too delicate toallude more directly. I said I was sorry and hoped she would soon be bet-ter.

“The girl is perfectly well, sir,” said Partridge. “She is Upset in her Feel-ings.”

“Oh,” I said rather doubtfully.

“Owing,” went on Partridge, “to a letter she has received. Making, I un-derstand, Insinuations.”

The grimness of Partridge’s eye, coupled with the obvious capital I of In-sinuations, made me apprehensive that the insinuations were concernedwith me. Since I would hardly have recognized Beatrice by sight if I hadmet her in the town so unaware of her had I been—I felt a not unnaturalannoyance. An invalid hobbling about on two sticks is hardly cast for therole of deceiver of village girls. I said irritably:

“What nonsense!”

“My very words, sir, to the girl’s mother,” said Partridge. “‘Goings On inthis house,’ I said to her, ‘there never have been and never will be while Iam in charge. As to Beatrice,’ I said, ‘girls are different nowadays, and asto Goings On elsewhere I can say nothing.’ But the truth is, sir, that Beat-rice’s friend from the garage as she walks out with got one of them nastyletters too, and he isn’t acting reasonable at all.”

“I have never heard anything so preposterous in my life,” I said angrily.

“It’s my opinion, sir,” said Partridge, “that we’re well rid of the girl.

What I say is, she wouldn’t take on so if there wasn’t something she didn’twant found out. No smoke without fire, that’s what I say.”

I had no idea how horribly tired I was going to get of that particularphrase.