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ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD 569
for telling stories ! I know this fellow means no good to Philip ;
and before long I will know what he means, that I will," she
vowed.
For, on the very day when Mr. Hunt paid her a visit, Mrs.
Brandon came to see Philip's friends, and acquaint them with
Hunt's arrival. We could not be sure that he was the bearer of
the forged bill with which poor Philip was threatened. As yet
Hunt had made no allusion to it. But, though we are far from
sanctioning deceit or hypocrisy, we own that we were not very
angry with the Little Sister for employing dissimulation in the
present instance, and inducing Hunt to believe that she was by
no means an accomplice of Philip. If Philip's wife pardoned her,
ought his friends to be less forgiving ? To do right, you know you
must not do wrong; though I own this was one of the cases in
which I am inclined not to deal very hardly with the well-meaning
little criminal.
Now, Charlotte had to pardon (and for this fault, if not for
some others, Charlotte did most heartily pardon) our little friend,
for this reason, that Brandon most wantonly maligned her. When
Hunt asked what sort of wife Philip had married, Mrs. Brandon
declared that Mrs. Philip was a pert odious little thing ; that she
gave herself airs, neglected her children, bullied her husband, and
what not ; and, finally, Brandon vowed that she disliked Charlotte,
and was very glad to get her out of the house ; and that Philip
was not the same Philip since he married her, and that he gave
himself airs, and was rude, and in all things led by his wife ; and
to get rid of them was a good riddance.
Hunt gracefully suggested that quarrels between landladies and
tenants were not unusual; that lodgers sometimes did not pay
their rent punctually ; that others were unreasonably anxious about
the consumption of their groceries, liquors, and so forth ; and little
Brandon, who, rather than steal a pennyworth from her Philip,
would have cut her hand off, laughed at her guest's joke, and pretended
to be amused with his knowing hints that she was a rogue.
There was not a word he said but she received it with a gracious
acquiescence : she might shudder inwardly at the leering familiarity
of the odious tipsy wretch, but she gave no outward sign of disgust
or fear. She allowed him to talk as much as he would, in hopes
that he would come to a subject which deeply interested her. She
asked about the Doctor, and what he was doing, and whether it
was likely that he would ever be able to pay back any of that
money which he had taken from his son ? And she spoke with
an indifferent tone, pretending to be very busy over some work
at which she was stitching.