Sweet and Twenty by Joan Smith

clever.”
    “No, Tony, that was not clever, as I have just been explaining,”Hudson told him. “It is very shortsighted.”
    “I meant clever for a lady,”Tony said, with a condescending look at the four women. “But a woman’s place is in the home, what? Shall we be off to spend more of the old sine qua non’s?” he asked. Hudson rubbed his brow in a weary fashion and said that they had better spend a great deal, and they were off.
    Miss Monteith had come to New Moon to get Sara married, and as the groom was to be in the village spending his patrimony, she shepherded her charges in that direction after lunch. Lady Monteith stayed home, as it was not her custom to budge an inch unless it should be necessary.
    The groom was not seen, since Hudson had taken him to visit Basingstoke and the families who lived to the West, but Martha discovered two items of interest, one of which inflamed her to wrath. There was to be a large political rally three evenings hence, and its significance to her was that Mr. Fellows would not be able to dine with them on that evening. The other news was that Mr. Alistair was a criminal even if he hadn’t a record, and so she would warn Mr. Fellows accordingly. His crime was that he was corrupting the merchants of Crockett.
    She overheard Mr. McGillicutty, the cobbler, say with a laugh that he had never got twenty-five pounds for a pair of boots before, and she stood examining a pair of leather laces till this interesting piece of information should be explained to her satisfaction. She imagined him to be fashioning some marvelous footgear for the royal family, but no. It was soon revealed that Mr. Alistair was paying the cobbler twenty-five pounds for a plain pair of boots without even a white band to the top of them, and if that was not corruption she was a wet goose! Her fiery eyes let it be known to her nieces how far from a wet goose she considered herself to be.
    “But Mr. Fellows paid a crown for a bushel of turnips, Aunt Martha, and no one ever paid more than a half-crown before,”Sara pointed out.
    “Charity—that is a different matter. Certainly he was taken in on the price of turnips—I mentioned it myself—but it was an error, not bribery. Twenty-five pounds for a pair of topboots is a very different matter. Mr. Fellows will hear of this, and Mr. Alistair will stand revealed for the low, criminal conniver he is. I didn’t like the looks of him from the beginning. He grins. Never trust a man that grins, girls. Let it be a lesson to both of you.”
    “I like the way he grins,”Sara said softly.
    “He’ll grin on the other side of his face when Mr. Fellows gets after him,”Martha replied.
    Miss Watters rather thought it would be Mr. Hudson who would get after him; she had no doubt that the gentleman of high morals would put a speedy end to bribery and corruption in the village.
    Martha went home immediately and sent a footboy off to St. Christopher’s Abbey requesting Mr. Fellows’s immediate—underlined twice—attendance on her regarding a most important matter. It suited her well to have such a good excuse to lure him back to New Moon, where she had every intention that he should remain for dinner and the evening.
    Nor did she have the least objection if Mr. Hudson should accompany him, for he had been seen to drive about the countryside in a very dignified black carriage drawn by a matched team of bays. She had observed as well that he had more than one well-cut coat to his back, and a fine gold watch. (There appeared to be sort of a crest on the watch, but her hopes had not soared to the height of thinking he had any right to the crest. There was still enough lowness in him that he might have won it in a card game.)
    “You, Lillian, can help me keep Mr. Hudson occupied so that Sara may have a minute alone with Mr. Fellows. A little privacy in a far corner is all I mean, of course, for certainly we shan’t leave the room. Even the best of men, as Mr. Fellows