“You know Mr. Gusher?” said our visitor.
We were obliged to say that we had not the pleasure of Mr. Gusher’s acquaintance.
“The loss is yours, I assure you,” said Mrs. Pardiggle with her commanding deportment. “He is a very fervid, impassioned speaker—full of fire! Stationed in a wagon on this lawn, now, which, from the shape of the land, is naturally adapted to a public meeting, he would improve almost any occasion you could mention for hours and hours! By this time, young ladies,” said Mrs. Pardiggle, moving back to her chair and overturning, as if by invisible agency, a little round table at a considerable distance with my workbasket on it, “by this time you have found me out, I dare say?”
This was really such a confusing question that Ada looked at me in perfect dismay. As to the guilty nature of my own consciousness after what I had been thinking, it must have been expressed in the colour of my cheeks.
“Found out, I mean,” said Mrs. Pardiggle, “the prominent point in my character. I am aware that it is so prominent as to be discoverable immediately. I lay myself open to detection, I know. Well! I freely admit, I am a woman of business. I love hard work; I enjoy hard work. The excitement does me good. I am so accustomed and inured to hard work that I don’t know what fatigue is.”
We murmured that it was very astonishing and very gratifying, or something to that effect. I don’t think we knew what it was either, but this is what our politeness expressed.