There are not many people now who keep up the custom of At Home days, but Mrs Solomon Bridgetower had retained her First Thursdays from that period, just before the First World War, when she had been a bride. Without being wealthy, she had a solid fortune, and it had protected her against changing customs; this made her a captain among those forces in Salterton which sought to resist social change, and every First Thursday a few distinguished members of this brave rearguard were to be found in her drawing-room, taking tea. At half-past three on the First Thursday in November tea had not yet appeared, but Miss Pottinger and Mrs Knapp, the Dean’s wife, were seated on a little sofa at one side of the fire, and Mrs Bridgetower, regally gowned in prune silk, with écru lace, sat in her armchair on the other. The atmosphere, though polite, was not easy.

“It seems perfectly clear to me,” Miss Pottinger was saving, “that the two events are linked. Both happened on Hallowe’en, and both concern the Cathedral. Then why should we not assume that both spring from the same brain?”

“But as we do not know what brain it was, what good can it do us to assume anything of the sort?” said Mrs Bridgetower, who had been highly educated, and would undoubtedly have had a career of some kind if she had not relinquished it to be all in all to the late Professor; the consciousness of this education and this possible career led her, in all but the most intimate circumstances, to talk in a measured, ironical tone, as though her hearers were half-witted.

“If everyone told everything they knew, we wouldn’t be in doubt for long,” said Miss Pottinger. This dark comment was directed at Mrs Knapp, a small, rather tremulous lady who tried to follow her husband along the perilous tightrope of urbanity.

“I’m quite sure you’re right,” said she, “and I am sure that the Dean would dearly love to know who put that false engagement notice in the paper. He was dreadfully angry about it. But he has never suggested that Mr Cobbler had anything to do with it.”

This was not pedantically true, for the Dean had said to her many times that he hoped to heaven Cobbler had nothing to do with it, for it would mean firing him, and the Dean wanted to keep his excellent organist as long as Cathedral opinion would permit. But Mrs Knapp was on thin ice, and she knew it.

“I happen to know that Mr Snelgrove has told the Dean that he thinks it was Cobbler,” said Miss Pottinger sharply, for she thought it ill became a Dean’s wife to palter with the truth, and she suspected, quite rightly, that the Dean told his wife everything. Loyalty between husbands and wives appeared to Miss Pottinger only as a shabby betrayal of the female sex.

“If Mr Snelgrove has interested himself in the matter,” said Mrs Bridgetower, “I am sure that we can leave it in his capable hands.”

“You mean that you don’t intend to take any action yourself, Louisa,” said Miss Pottinger.

“I have not yet decided what I shall do,” said Mrs Bridgetower, with a reserved smile.

“You don’t intend to take this lying down, I suppose?”

“I think you know that it is not my way to pass over a slight, Puss dear.”

“Well, it is now three days since that piece appeared, and your friends are wondering when you are going to declare yourself.”

“My friends need not be concerned; my real friends know, I am sure, that I am not one to take hasty or ill-advised action in any matter. I have not the robust health which would permit me to scamper about the town, making useless mischief. Even if I had a temperament which took pleasure in it.”

In Mrs Bridgetower’s circle, this was tough talk, and Miss Pottinger ground her false teeth angrily. But Mrs Knapp, who had known these ladies for a mere ten years or so, and was thus a virtual newcomer to Salterton society, interjected an unfortunate attempt to make peace.

“Oh, I am quite certain dear Auntie Puss has no such desire,” said she. “We all know that her intentions are of the very best.” Then, catching the lightning from Miss Pottinger’s eye, she subsided with an exhalation which was meant to be a social laugh, and sounded like fright.

“I suppose I am old-fashioned,” said Miss Pottinger, “but I still do not see why sacrilege and assaults on people’s good names should be passed over without a thing being done. You have a phlegmatic temperament, Louisa, and are perhaps too ill to care what goes on, but I would have thought that Solly would have had something to say for himself by this time.”

“My son has faith in my judgement,” said Mrs Bridgetower.

“Of course, but a man with any real gimp in him would have done something before he had had time to talk to you.”

This was insufferable! Mrs Bridgetower moved into action, which, in her case meant that she relaxed in her chair, allowed her heavy lids to drop a little farther over her eyes, and smiled.

“And what would he have done, Puss, pray? Would he have rushed to Mr Cobbler, and struck him in the face? To have suspected Mr Cobbler in this matter he would have had to take guidance from you, for you seem to be the one who wants to hang Mr Cobbler’s hide on the fence, as the boys used to say when we were young. And I do not think that it has ever occurred to Solomon to consult you in any matter, particularly. And a certain gallantry which you, dear, might not appreciate, forbids a man to deny in the open market-place that he is engaged to a girl after such a report, without knowing precisely what he is doing. There are still gentlemen in the world, Puss, whatever our experience may have been.”

This was dirty fighting indeed, and referred to the sudden disappearance, many years before, of a man who, without being actually engaged to Auntie Puss, had put that lady into a mood to accept him if asked. Pouring salt into wounds was a specialty of Mrs Bridgetower’s, and the older the wound was the better she liked it.

Auntie Puss took refuge in hurt feelings. Her chin quivered and she spoke in a tremulous voice. “If you don’t take care, Louisa, that is all there is to be said about it. My concern was for you, and for the good name of the Cathedral. A soldier’s daughter probably sees these things differently from most people.”

“I think that even a soldier’s daughter should know who the enemy is before she fires,” said Mrs Bridgetower who, as a woman herself, set little store by wobbling chins and tearful voices in others. She might have gone on to demolish Auntie Puss completely if, at this moment, reinforcements had not arrived in the person of Mrs Roger Warboys. Because of her connection with The Bellman it was impossible to say at once if she were friend or foe, and all the time which was occupied by bringing in the tea, and pouring it out, and passing thin bread and butter, was needed before it became perfectly clear that Mrs Warboys had come expressly to talk about the great scandal, and that she was on the side of those whose privacy and inmost feelings had been so grossly violated.

Mrs Warboys’ position was a peculiar one, distinguished by many interesting shades of feeling, and she enjoyed it very much in a solemn, stricken way. She felt a family loyalty to The Bellman, of course. She thought a newspaper a powerful influence in a community and a great trust; she yearned to see The Bellman conducted according to the highest standards of journalism, as she conceived them. She had repeatedly impressed these views of hers upon her father-in-law, Mr Clerebold Warboys, who—although she was the last one to say a word against the late Roger’s father—paid no attention to them. If she could, only for a month, have a free hand at The Bellman, it would be a very different paper thereafter. Some heads would roll, and although she named no names, certain powerful editorial influences would be removed. She was humiliated by the incident of the false engagement notice, and had come to Mrs Bridgetower’s First Thursday most unsure of her welcome. She appreciated perfectly how she would feel herself, if she were in Mrs Bridgetower’s position, but she did not wish to lose friends over a matter which she had been powerless to prevent, but which she might be able to amend.