Dalton accordingly offered his arm to Lady Hester, who accepted the courtesy in all form, and the little party moved into the sitting-room; Nelly following, with an expression of sadness in her pale features, very unlike the triumphant glances of her father and sister.
“I 'm certain of your pardon, Mr. Dalton, and of yours, too, my dear child,” said Lady Hester, turning towards Kate, as she seated herself on the stiff old sofa, “when I avow that I have come here determined to pass the evening with you. I 'm not quite so sure that my dear Miss Dalton's forgiveness will be so readily accorded me. I see that she already looks gravely at the prospect of listening to my fiddle-faddle instead of following out her own charming fancies.”
“Oh, how you wrong me, my Lady!” broke in Nelly, eagerly. “If it were not for my fears of our unfitness our inability,” she stammered in confusion and shame; and old Dalton broke in,
“Don't mind her, my Lady; we 're as well used to company as any family in the country; but, you see, we don't generally mix with the people one meets abroad; and why should we? God knows who they are. There was chaps here last summer at the tables you would n't let into the servants' hall. There was one I seen myself, with an elegant pair of horses, as nice steppers as ever you looked at, and a groom behind with a leather strap round him,” and here Mr. Dalton performed a pantomime, by extending the fingers of his open hand at the side of his head, to represent a cockade “what d' ye call it in his hat; and who was he, did you think? 'Billy Rogers,' of Muck; his father was in the canal—”
“In the canal!” exclaimed Lady Hester, in affright.
“Yes, my Lady; in the Grand Canal, an inspector at forty pounds a year, the devil a farthin' more; and if you seen the son here, with two pins in his cravat, and a gold chain twisting and turning over his waistcoat, with his hat on one side, and yellow gloves, new every morning, throwing down the 'Naps' at that thieving game they call 'Red and Black,' you'd say he was the Duke of Leinster!”
“Was he so like his Grace?” asked Lady Hester, with a delightful simplicity.
“No; but grander!” replied Dalton, with a wave of his hand.
“It is really, as you remark, very true,” resumed her Ladyship. “It is quite impossible to venture upon an acquaintance out of England; and I cordially concur in the caution you practise.”
“So I 'm always telling the girls, 'better no company than trumpery!' not that I don't like a bit of sociality as well as ever I did, a snug little party of one's own, people whose mothers and fathers had names, the real old stock of the land. But to be taken up with every chance rapscallion you meet on the cross-roads, to be hand and glove with this, that, and the other, them never was my sentiments.”