Angel's Touch by Elizabeth Bailey

Sunday, Verity was up betimes to take herself to early
morning service while Lady Crossens joined the daily routine of
drinking the waters.
    The Tunbridge Wells
social scene being entirely encompassed in the area of the
Pantiles, it was impossible for Verity, walking to and from the
King Charles Chapel at the far end of it beyond the well itself,
where the water-dippers dispensed their glasses of health-giving
liquid, to miss the early morning ceremony of taking the
waters.
    It was amusing to see
all the valetudinarians wandering about in their dishabille. The
ladies were in undress gowns, chemise robes closed from bosom to
hem with buttons or ribbon ties, worn with or without a sash, their
hair tucked into mob-caps or turbans. The gentlemen sported
brocaded dressing-gowns of virulent hue, full length and tied with
a girdle, or, in the case of Indian banyans, falling to the knee
and magnificently frogged. Their shaven heads were covered by
velvet nightcaps, except for those modern-minded gentlemen, who had
fallen into the coming fashion of wearing their own hair, some of
whom saw fit to twist their greying locks into rag curlers which
stuck out all over their heads.
    The company seemed
quite unconcerned at the extraordinary picture they presented, and
it was, to Verity, a question whether they came there to partake of
the health-giving chalybeate spring, or to meet their acquaintance.
For the chatter and laughter quite outdid the groans at their aches
and ailments and complaints of the bitter taste of the waters. Lady
Crossens was in her element, her scrawny figure almost darting
about as she greeted some newly arrived old friends with enthusiasm
and traced in exhaustive detail their several meanderings in the
intervening years since her last visit.
    After a hearty breakfast, once Lady Crossens was more
comformably dressed, they went over to the ladies’ coffee-room for
another bout of gossip, and again, when that palled, passed across
the Pantiles to the Lower Assembly Rooms for yet more of the same,
for there were no dances and no card playing on the Sabbath. Verity
found a chair a little way behind that of her patroness, and here
she was very soon joined by the plump form of Mrs
Polegate.
    ‘ Poor Miss Lambourn, are you dreadfully bored?’ began that
lady, innocently enough.
    Verity turned to find
the widow had seated herself with a rustle of her wide taffeta
petticoats, and was regarding her with a kind of wistful pity.
    ‘ Not
at all, ma’am,’ she said smiling. ‘There is no occasion for you to
worry yourself on my account. I am doing very well.’
    ‘ Oh,
I do hope so,’ said the lady mournfully. ‘It is so melancholy to
see young people moped quite to death.’
    ‘ Gracious me, ma’am, I promise you I am nothing of the kind.’
She saw that the lady looked unconvinced and added cheerfully, ‘One
must of necessity be quiet on a Sunday, you know.’
    ‘ That is true. I abominate Sundays for that very reason, do
not you?’
    ‘ Being a clergyman’s daughter, ma’am, I cannot say that I do,’
Verity replied, twinkling.
    ‘ Of
course, yes, how silly,’ laughed the widow merrily. ‘I suppose you
would not look for excitement and adventure at all.’
    ‘ Oh,
I am not the less anxious for them on that account, believe
me.’
    ‘ No,
of course you are not. How should you be, so young and full of life
as you are?’ Her expression changed as she leaned closer and said
on an enquiring note, ‘And as to adventure, you rather hinted at
some such thing yesterday, I think.’
    ‘ Oh,
that,’ Verity said offhandedly. ‘Well, you could call it that.
Really, it was nothing.’
    ‘ Do not say so. A man! And children, was it?’ asked
Mrs Polegate, her eyes avid with anticipation in their frame of
white lace. ‘Did it happen on your way here?’
    ‘ Well, yes,’ confessed Miss Lambourn, sure that her patroness
would disapprove. But she was incapable of deception and knew not
how to parry the other lady’s