“My darling girl,” she began again.
“Not woman yet?” said Edith, with a smile.
“How very odd you are today, my dear! Pray let me say, my love, that Major Bagstock has brought the kindest of notes from Mr Dombey, proposing that we should breakfast with him to-morrow, and ride to Warwick and Kenilworth. Will you go, Edith?”
“Will I go!” she repeated, turning very red, and breathing quickly as she looked round at her mother.
“I knew you would, my own, observed the latter carelessly. “It is, as you say, quite a form to ask. Here is Mr Dombey’s letter, Edith.”
“Thank you. I have no desire to read it,” was her answer.
“Then perhaps I had better answer it myself,” said Mrs Skewton, “though I had thought of asking you to be my secretary, darling.” As Edith made no movement, and no answer, Mrs Skewton begged the Major to wheel her little table nearer, and to set open the desk it contained, and to take out pen and paper for her; all which congenial offices of gallantry the Major discharged, with much submission and devotion.
“Your regards, Edith, my dear?” said Mrs Skewton, pausing, pen in hand, at the postscript.
“What you will, Mama,” she answered, without turning her head, and with supreme indifference.
Mrs Skewton wrote what she would, without seeking for any more explicit directions, and handed her letter to the Major, who receiving it as a precious charge, made a show of laying it near his heart, but was fain to put it in the pocket of his pantaloons on account of the insecurity of his waistcoat. The Major then took a very polished and chivalrous farewell of both ladies, which the elder one acknowledged in her usual manner, while the younger, sitting with her face addressed to the window, bent her head so slightly that it would have been a greater compliment to the Major to have made no sign at all, and to have left him to infer that he had not been heard or thought of.