“‘Nobody asked you, sir, she said,’” quoted Alice, standing up and shaking some crumbs from her lap. “Your manners are not sufficiently formed—you don’t know the meaning of the word ‘decorum,’ and you always try to make me laugh or inveigle me into some horrid blunder, and then you are delighted and sit grinning like a Cheshire cat. No, you won’t do.”
“Thanks, fair cousin, thanks,” raising himself to a kneeling posture, and making a profound full-length salaam on the short green sward.
“I see I must go alone,” exclaimed Alice, glancing hopelessly at her husband, who was lying on the grass, smoking, his arms folded behind his head, his hat over his eyes, the very embodiment of luxurious lazy indifference.
“Don’t drink all the tea, good people,” was her parting injunction as she hurried off across the lawn, the whole party following with admiring eyes her well-poised figure and graceful gait.
“I must go in too,” said Helen with visible reluctance, when she had conscientiously drained her second cup of tea. “I promised to drive down to the village with Miss Saville. She thinks one of the schoolmaster’s daughters would be an ideal maid for Hilda. Heigho! I suppose I must leave you,” rising heavily.
“It is to be hoped that this ‘ideal maid’ will turn out to be something more beautiful than your present treasure, Helen,” remarked Geoffrey impressively. “To say that she is plain about the head but feebly expresses it; if you were to set her up in a field, not a crow would come near it. Shall I come with you”—half rising—“and give you the benefit of my critical and artistic eye? I’m not half a bad judge,” he added complacently.
“How can you be so detestably vulgar! Fancy discussing the appearance of people’s servants,” said Helen, with the air of lofty righteous indignation.
“And why not?” pursued Geoffrey serenely.
“Why not?” echoed Mrs. Mayhew. “Well, for one thing——However, I’m not going to bandy words with you now—here are all these people coming from the house, and I must flee,” she added hastily, as she turned and hurried off among the trees in the hopes of making her escape unseen.
She was quite correct—Alice was actually sallying forth, escorting two elderly ladies and a vapid-looking youth, with hay-coloured hair and an incipient ditto moustache. He wore an extraordinarily high collar, an eye-glass, and pale lavender gloves, and it was easy to see that he considered James Blundell, Esq., the very glass of fashion and the mould of form. He was sucking the knob of his cane with greedy relish, and casting every now and then glances of marked approbation on his pretty young hostess, as he stalked along beside her.