"Hoity-toity, tired! No, you can't be tired. It will be years before there is another event like this. Let me call Mr. Wandesforde over there to take you to hear this Dublin singer, Madame Squallini, or whatever the woman's name is. All the people have gone trooping off to the music-room to hear her."
"Please don't, dear Miss Spencer, I would so much rather sit here by you. I have heard a great many fine singers already."
"Why, what's come to you, Pam? You used to be as full of fun as Sylvia. Now you are like a girl whose lover has gone away—I know how such a one would feel—and has never come back to her."
Sir John Beaumont returned at this moment.
"I don't know whether your father or your sister is in the greatest demand, Miss Graydon," he said. "I heard peals of laughter as I passed the sitting-room, and, looking in, I saw your father delighting them. He's a charming fellow, upon my word. He's wasted on rusticity."
"Indeed, Sir John, I suppose the rustics ought all to be plain and stupid," said Miss Spencer.
"Ah, my dear lady," murmured the old gentleman, "that would be to do without you."
"Oh, I daresay; you always had a pretty speech ready. And what about Pam here?"
"Miss Pamela belongs to the country, as lilies and roses do."
"She likes to bloom in the shade," said Miss Spencer, a bit irritably. "What do you think of a girl who prefers to sit in the corner rather than hold a court as her younger sister is doing?"