“Your pretty little colonial heiress far exceeds my expectations,” he is saying (the horrid little wretch, I should like to box his ears!).
“Yes,” replies Bertha, also in a clear falsetto, and with a peculiar drawl that I notice she wears in the evening, with her other full-dress ornaments; “yes, she has agreeably surprised us all. You really would hardly know she was colonial if you were not told.”
“I am quite sure I should not. And her dress—really now, her dress is quite perfect—now, isn’t it?”
“Oh, her dress!” says Bertha, with what sounds like a sharper intonation of voice. “Of course her dress is the correct thing, for it was made at one of the best houses in Paris. She did not bring that from Australia.”
“She brought that fine figure, though.”
Here Captain Damer begins to thunder away to Eleanor with a somewhat angry vehemence. I know he is kindly trying to shut off that obtrusive dialogue from my ears, and I feel grateful to him. I inwardly determine that I will make myself pleasant to him when he comes up from his wine, and that I will not speak to Lieutenant Wiggles if I can help it. Bella Goodeve and Bertie Armytage bring up the rear of the family procession, which is closed by aunt Alice and her distinguished brother-in-law. Bella is a weak copy of Bertha, and both of them (as far as I can judge from so short an acquaintance) fair types of a common class of fashionable young ladies not quite in the best society. Cousin Bertie is like his father, in a loose, unformed, elementary way, with a thin, bright-eyed, hook-nosed face, a large frame unfilled and angular, and the shy, quiet manners of a gentlemanly boy. Some day he will be big and handsome, I think to myself, if he does not study too much, or fall into consumption.
And so we sail, and sweep, and rustle into the dining-room, two and two, and are marshalled to our places at the table, which is simply a great bank of flowers, with a shining fringe of silver and crystal all round it, lit up by that dazzling gaslight which I enjoy so much, and which never makes my head ache as it does mother’s. Uncle Armytage stands up and says grace, the velvet-footed servants begin to glide about with plates and dishes; Mr. Goodeve beams upon his family party, and says “Welcome” in every line of his kind, ugly, fat face. And my dear father looks round on us all, and sighs, and says to aunt Alice, “We only want James here to make it all complete.”
“James!” echoes Mr. Goodeve, with cold astonishment. “James!—my dear Harry, what are you thinking of?”
“I can’t help thinking, now we are all together and happy, that I wish poor James were here, too,” repeats my dearest daddy, gravely.
The remark is evidently considered by the company (some of them, at any rate) a proof of the disastrous effects of bush life in blunting the polite perceptions of even well-born gentlemen, but mother looks up at him with quick, glad eyes; and, as for me, it is all I can do to keep from running round the table to kiss him.