"Really, I don't know," answered Mr. Lashmar, feebly. His wife, in
this mood, had a dazing effect upon him.

"Let me see the letter."

Mrs. Lashmar perused the half-dozen lines in her son's handwriting.

"Why, he _does_ say!" she exclaimed in her deepest and most
disdainful chord. "He says 'before long.'"

"True. But I hardly think that conveys--"

"Oh, please don't begin a sophistical argument He says when he is
coming, and that's all I want to know here's a letter, I see, from
that silly Mrs. Barker--her husband has quite given up drink, and
earns good wages, sad the eldest boy has a place--pooh!"

"All very good news, it seems to me," remarked the vicar, slightly
raising his eyebrows.

But one of Mrs. Lashmar's little peculiarities was that, though she
would exert herself to any extent for people whose helpless
circumstances utterly subjected them to her authority, she lost all
interest in them as soon as their troubles were surmounted, and even
viewed with resentment that result of her own efforts. Worse still,
from her point of view, if the effort had largely been that of the
sufferers themselves--as in this case. Mrs. Barker, a washerwoman
who had reformed her sottish husband, was henceforth a mere offence
in the eyes of the vicar's wife.