‘At Naples. I liked him very much till he persecuted me beyond endurance with Tennyson and Browning. He is always going about in raptures with some new-fashioned poet.’
‘I suppose he will set up Theodora for his muse. My mother is enchanted; he is exactly one of her own set, music, pictures, and all. The second-hand courtship is a fine chance for her when Miss Martindale is ungracious.’
‘But it will not come to anything,’ said John. ‘In the meantime, her ladyship gets the benefit of a lion, and a very tawny lion, for her soirees.’
‘Oh! that soiree will be something pleasant for you,’ said Violet.
‘I shall cut it. It is the first day I can be here.’
‘Not meet that great African traveller?’
‘What good would Baron Munchausen himself do me in the crowd my mother is heaping together?’
‘I am sure your mother and sister must want you.’
‘Want must be their master. I am not going to elbow myself about and be squashed flat for their pleasure. It is a dozen times worse to be in a mob at home, for one has to find chairs for all the ladies. Pah!’
‘That is very lazy!’ said the wife. ‘You will be sorry to have missed it when it is too late, and your home people will be vexed.’