“I’m delighted to hear it. Where are you bound for, Aubrey?”
“We are going to do the pictures. I’m showman.”
“What a preposterous fraud! Miss Hayes, he knows no more of pictures than he does of making a watch! I’ll take you round the gallery; at least, I know a Landseer from a Rubens.”
“Not a little bit of it,” rejoined the other. “Miss Hayes was given into my sole charge—were you not, Miss Hayes?—and I am responsible for her. Go up-stairs—you will find some old friends,” he added, rather significantly.
During this polite competition for my company, Miss Benny and her cousin had been hovering about in our vicinity, and now accosted me—
“Ahem, Miss Hayes, my dear, the dancing will not begin for half an hour; don’t you think you had better come and sit with us till then?”
But I had not forgotten my recent treatment at her hands, and said—
“Oh, thank you, Miss Benny, I am just going to see the pictures, as you recommended, and you know I have sat with you for nearly an hour already in the fly, and you will have me again going back.”
Miss Benny sniffed, glared, and backed herself away in purple wrath.
“I see you are a match for Miss Benny,” said Mr. Somers, with a grin.