Feral Park Read Online Free Page B

sitting at table in less than a fortnight with the man who may some day ask for my hand in marriage…”
    Here Mr. Peppercorn wagged a finger at his daughter in gentle admonishment for wishing too much for that which only fortuity will deliver.
    “…I must ask if these consuming thoughts of yours about the underlying collective immorality of those who live within Payton Parish—which, I might add, I have yet to witness even in shadow or embryonic indication—will dissipate following your visit with Dr. Bosworthy, and his setting you strait about the currency of such things. If not, I will dearly mourn the loss of my father’s former lofty estimation of those whose society he has kept. Whilst I have consistently found the finding of fault with others to be a disagreeable alloy of my own faulted character, it was always your countervailing uplifting of the objects of my prejudice and disfavour that kept me away from the door of total despondence. Whenever I noted a defect—large or small—in those whom I met, you were always eager to counter my view with plausible explanation or benevolent justification, or failing these, entreat me to array my uncharitable opinion with the warm cloak of simple Christian forgiveness. And in tempering my suspicions and softening my ill-assessments, you improved my character. Now if indeed you sit poised to best me at my own game, to whom shall I turn for my correction?”
    Mr. Peppercorn took his daughter’s hand in his own and held it for a moment in contemplative silence. Then he said, “There are things which have come to my attention—things about our neighbours within this parish that are unsettling at best. I have not confirmed the veracity of any single account, yet I am comfortable with the trustworthiness of my source.”
    “That answer, my dear father, was off the point and additionally troubling in appendance.”
    “Perhaps, daughter, it would, at this juncture, do you well to solicit a favourable opinion of the denizens of Payton Parish from someone else. Perhaps my negative influence in this regard should be offset by a visit to your uncle’s first wife Mrs. Taptoe. She is at times sanguine to the point of being Panglossian, in spite of her own trials and privations. You will find her in Turnington Lodge. She has just taken a cottage there.”
    “Mrs. Taptoe has been put out of the home of her daughter and son-inlaw?”
    Mr. Peppercorn responded with a pensive nod.
    “And do you know why?”
    “A disagreement between mother and daughter. It does not serve to divulge further.”
    With sudden indignation Anna was compelled to respond, “Meaning that you know more? How is it, Papa, that you know things ? You have never advertised yourself as a consumer of gossip!”
    “Nor am I, as well, a gossip monger .”
    “And yet there is one person who seems to benefit from proximity to your ear.”
    “Perhaps for the very reason that I intend to keep this individual’s confidences to myself. Perhaps the person who informs me frees himself or herself of all manner of onerous secrets because I listen with understanding nods and with lips for ever sealed.”
    “And all the while I thought that you sat alone in your library and listened only to the deathless voices of your perukeless poets and historiographers and diarists.”
    “And novelists as well, for these amuse me most of all.”
    “Yet you do more than read in your idle hours! You tiptoe off to hear all about the scandals of our iniquitous parish! And then you refuse to breathe more than a syllable to your daughter, even as you muse philosophic upon the state of our world. And on top of it all, you recommend that I seek solace of some sort from she who may be the most blind of us all to what goes on within the parish. Well, Papa, I will not listen another moment to your generalities in this regard—unless, of course, you change your mind about relating the specifics.”
    “A tidy bargain, to be sure. I shall sleep