"I'm very glad to hear it," said Miss Stanbury.
Brooke Burgess, or Mr. Brooke, as he came to be called very shortly by the servants in the house, was a good-looking man, with black whiskers and black hair, which, as he said, was beginning to be thin on the top of his head, and pleasant small bright eyes. Dorothy thought that next to her brother Hugh he was the most good-natured looking man she had ever seen. He was rather below the middle height, and somewhat inclined to be stout. But he would boast that he could still walk his twelve miles in three hours, and would add that as long as he could do that he would never recognise the necessity of putting himself on short commons. He had a well-cut nose, not quite aquiline, but tending that way, a chin with a dimple on it, and as sweet a mouth as ever declared the excellence of a man's temper. Dorothy immediately began to compare him with her brother Hugh, who was to her, of all men, the most godlike. It never occurred to her to make any comparison between Mr. Gibson and Mr. Burgess. Her brother Hugh was the most godlike of men; but there was something godlike also about the new comer. Mr. Gibson, to Dorothy's eyes, was by no means divine.
"I used to call you Aunt Stanbury," said Brooke Burgess to the old lady; "am I to go on doing it now?"
"You may call me what you like," said Miss Stanbury. "Only,—dear me;—I never did see anybody so much altered." Before she went up to dress herself for dinner, Miss Stanbury was quite restored to her good humour, as Dorothy could perceive.
The dinner passed off well enough. Mr. Gibson, at the head of the table, did, indeed, look very much out of his element, as though he conceived that his position revealed to the outer world those ideas of his in regard to Dorothy, which ought to have been secret for a while longer. There are few men who do not feel ashamed of being paraded before the world as acknowledged suitors, whereas ladies accept the position with something almost of triumph. The lady perhaps regards herself as the successful angler, whereas the gentleman is conscious of some similitude to the unsuccessful fish. Mr. Gibson, though he was not yet gasping in the basket, had some presentiment of this feeling, which made his present seat of honour unpleasant to him. Brooke Burgess, at the other end of the table, was as gay as a lark. Mrs. MacHugh sat on one side of him, and Miss Stanbury on the other, and he laughed at the two old ladies, reminding them of his former doings in Exeter,—how he had hunted Mrs. MacHugh's cat, and had stolen Aunt Stanbury's best apricot jam, till everybody began to perceive that he was quite a success. Even Sir Peter Mancrudy laughed at his jokes, and Mrs. Powel, from the other side of Sir Peter, stretched her head forward so that she might become one of the gay party.
"There isn't a word of it true," said Miss Stanbury. "It's all pure invention, and a great scandal. I never did such a thing in my life."
"Didn't you though?" said Brooke Burgess. "I remember it as well as if it was yesterday, and old Dr. Ball, the prebendary, with the carbuncles on his nose, saw it too."
"Dr. Ball had no carbuncles on his nose," said Mrs. MacHugh. "You'll say next that I have carbuncles on my nose."
"He had three. I remember each of them quite well, and so does Sir Peter."
Then everybody laughed; and Martha, who was in the room, knew that Brooke Burgess was a complete success.