"That they're engaged, of course. What else can all this mean?"
"He didn't tell me that, but I like her."
"LIKE her!" the girl shrieked.
"She's very kind, very good."
"To thrust herself upon us when we hate her? Is that what you call
kind? Is that what you call decent?"
"Oh _I_ don't hate her"--and he turned away as if she bored him.
She called the next day on Mrs. Churchley, designing to break out
somehow, to plead, to appeal--"Oh spare us! have mercy on us! let him
alone! go away!" But that wasn't easy when they were face to face.
Mrs. Churchley had every intention of getting, as she would have
said--she was perpetually using the expression--into touch; but her
good intentions were as depressing as a tailor's misfits. She could
never understand that they had no place for her vulgar charity, that
their life was filled with a fragrance of perfection for which she
had no sense fine enough. She was as undomestic as a shop-front and
as out of tune as a parrot. She would either make them live in the
streets or bring the streets into their life--it was the same thing.
She had evidently never read a book, and she used intonations that
Adela had never heard, as if she had been an Australian or an
American. She understood everything in a vulgar sense; speaking of
Godfrey's visit to her and praising him according to her idea, saying
horrid things about him--that he was awfully good-looking, a perfect
gentleman, the kind she liked.
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