‘Do,’ said Lucilla, running lightly up, and dancing into the drawing-room, where the ladies were so much at their ease, on low couches and ottomans, that Phœbe stood transfixed by the novelty of a drawing-room treated with such freedom as was seldom permitted in even the schoolroom at Beauchamp, when Miss Fennimore was in presence.
‘Phœbe, bright Phœbe!’ cried Lucilla, pouncing on both her hands, and drawing her towards the other room, ‘it is ten ages since I saw you, and you must bring your taste to aid my choice of the fly costume. Did you hear, Rashe? I’ve a bet with Lord William that I appear at the ball all in flies. Isn’t it fun?’
‘Oh, jolly!’ cried Horatia. ‘Make yourself a pike-fly.’
‘No, no; not a guy for any one. Only wear a trimming of salmon-flies, which will be lovely.’
‘You do not really mean it?’ said Phœbe.
‘Mean it? With all my heart, in spite of the tremendous sacrifice of good flies. Where honour is concerned—’
‘There, I knew you would not shirk.’
‘Did I ever say so?’—in a whisper, not unheard by Phœbe, and affording her so much satisfaction that she only said, in a grave, puzzled voice, ‘The hooks?’
‘Hooks and all,’ was the answer. ‘I do nothing by halves.’
‘What a state of mind the fishermen will be in! proceeded Horatia. ‘You’ll have every one of them at your feet.’