Clock House. But when people are very poor they do get driven to
do almost anything."

Mrs. Merton, not being very wise, had conceived it to be her duty
to repeat this to Priscilla; and Mrs. Ellison, not being very
good-natured, had conceived it to be hers to repeat it to Mrs.
MacHugh at Exeter. And then Bozzle's coming had become known.

"Yes, Mrs. MacHugh, a policeman in mufti down at Nuncombe! I wonder
what our friend in the Close here will think about it! I have always
said, you know, that if she wanted to keep things straight at
Nuncombe, she should have opened her purse-strings."

From all which it may be understood, that Priscilla Stanbury's desire
to go back to their old way of living had not been without reason.

It may be imagined that Miss Stanbury of the Close did not receive
with equanimity the reports which reached her. And, of course, when
she discussed the matter either with Martha or with Dorothy, she fell
back upon her own early appreciation of the folly of the Clock House
arrangement. Nevertheless, she had called Mrs. Ellison very bad
names, when she learned from her friend Mrs. MacHugh what reports
were being spread by the lady from Lessboro'.

"Mrs. Ellison! Yes; we all know Mrs. Ellison. The bitterest tongue in
Devonshire, and the falsest! There are some people at Lessboro' who
would be well pleased if she paid her way there as well as those poor
women do at Nuncombe. I don't think much of what Mrs. Ellison says."

"But it is bad about the policeman," said Mrs. MacHugh.

"Of course it's bad. It's all bad. I'm not saying that it's not bad.
I'm glad I've got this other young woman out of it. It's all that
young man's doing. If I had a son of my own, I'd sooner follow him to
the grave than hear him call himself a Radical."

Then, on a sudden, there came to the Close news that Mrs. Trevelyan
and her sister were gone. On the very Monday on which they went,
Priscilla sent a note on to her sister, in which no special allusion
was made to Aunt Stanbury, but which was no doubt written with the
intention that the news should be communicated.

"Gone; are they? As it is past wishing that they hadn't come, it's
the best thing they could do now. And who is to pay the rent of the
house, now they have gone?" As this was a point on which Dorothy was
not prepared to trouble herself at present, she made no answer to the
question.

Dorothy at this time was in a state of very great perturbation on her
own