Martha Biggs could not but feel that this was hard, but she knew that friendship is nothing if it be not long enduring. 'Dearest Kitty!' she exclaimed. 'If true sympathy can be of service to you———'
'I wonder whether I could get respectable lodgings in the neighbourhood of Red Lion Square for a week?' said Mrs. Furnival, once more bringing the conversation back from the abstract to the concrete.
In answer to this Miss Biggs of course offered the use of her own bedroom and of her father's house; but her father was an old man, and Mrs. Furnival positively refused to agree to any such arrangement. At last it was decided that Martha should at once go off and look for lodgings in the vicinity of her own home, that Mrs. Furnival should proceed to carry on her own business in her own way,—the cruelty being this, that she would not give the least hint as to what that way might be,—and that the two ladies should meet together in the Red Lion Square drawing-room at the close of the day.
'And about dinner, dear?' asked Miss Biggs.
'I will get something at a pastrycook's,' said Mrs. Furnival.
'And your clothes, dear?'
'Rachel will see about them; she knows.' Now Rachel was the old female servant of twenty years' standing; and the disappointment experienced by poor Miss Biggs at the ignorance in which she was left was greatly enhanced by a belief that Rachel knew more than she did. Mrs. Furnival would tell Rachel but would not tell her. This was very, very hard, as Miss Biggs felt. But, nevertheless, friendship, sincere friendship is long enduring, and true patient merit will generally receive at last its appropriate reward.
Then Mrs. Furnival had sat down, Martha Biggs having been duly sent forth on the mission after the lodgings, and had written a letter to her husband. This she intrusted to Rachel, whom she did not purpose to remove from that abode of iniquity from which she herself was fleeing, and having completed her letter she went out upon her own work. The letter ran as follows:—
'My dearest Tom,
'I cannot stand this any longer, so I have thought it best to leave the house and go away. I am very sorry to be forced to such a step as this, and would have put up with a good deal first; but there are some things which I cannot put up with,—and won't. I know that a woman has to obey her husband, and I have always obeyed you, and thought it no hardship even when I was left so much alone; but a woman is not to see a slut brought in under her
