“No. Nothing less than a gay Hussar will suit her,” rejoined Eustace. “There are two in the regiment that’ll be just the thing—both much of a muchness. I’m going to bring them over next time I get leave, and then, O Sophonisba, my child, you can smile on the survivor.”
“No,” retorted the girl mischievously. “I don’t like soldiers—cavalrymen least of all. Civilians are much nicer. Look at Roland, for instance. He doesn’t tire one with a lot of third-hand chaff.”
“Oh, come! I say, Olive, do you allow that?” cried the irrepressible subaltern. “In view of the approximate passing of the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Bill, I call upon you to quell such sentiments, and to repudiate their enunciator—trix, rather.”
The ice at Spelder Fields was in fine order. It was a large, flooded meadow on one of the Cranston farms, and although the Squire could have kept it closed to the public, that course would have roused such an amount of ill-feeling as to render the experiment not worth while, for it had been used from time immemorial. It was the rule, however, that anything tending to spoil the ice should be rigorously excluded, and elides were strictly taboo, while any approach to yahooism was promptly nipped in the bud. As the townspeople could not turn out till evening, during the daytime the privileged few had things all their own way.
We shall not, however, follow our party throughout the day. Be it briefly recorded, however, that Marsland surrendered at discretion to Sophie’s blue eyes and golden hair, and fresh, bewitching ways, and constituted himself her guide, philosopher and friend, and fetch-and-carry generally, through the uncertain and mazy evolutions of the ice—and how Eustace poured out the vials of his exuberant chaff upon them and upon everybody, and notably upon a brace of shaven and spectacled young clerics, who rather fancied themselves on skates, and, with singular unanimity of intent, were bent on imbuing Sophie with the same idea, but that our friend Marsland sailed in and cut out the prize from under their guns, apparently with the full approval of the prize itself.
“Time to knock off and give King Mob his innings,” cried Roland, whirling up to the bank and casting himself thereon.
“Oh, hang it, old man! Isn’t it rather soon?” objected Marsland, who, hand-in-hand with a certain blue-eyed young lady, glided by just in time to catch the suggestion.
“Rather soon! I should think it was!” echoed Sophie.
“I think Mr Dorrien’s right,” said Clara Neville, who had just been taking a turn or two round the ice with the first speaker. “It’s disagreeable being here when the place is full of rough people. Besides, it’s getting late.”
Ill-natured friends were wont to whisper that the fair Clara was getting somewhat passée and soured, and that the qualifications of the future aspirant to Ardleigh Court would not be so narrowly scrutinised now as of yore. But the answer to this libel was that she had refused two very good offers and one indifferent one. Her sister, Maud, was married, and Clara was left alone in the ancestral halls. And now she had made up her mind to smile favourably on Frank Marsland, who had on a former occasion or two begun to show her attention, when again that detestable Rectory furnished a thorn for her side. That chit of a girl had upset the plan, even as her sister had done years before. Poor Clara had not enjoyed her day.