The schoolroom set, with Tom and Aubrey, came home soon after, and tongues went fast with stories of roast-beef, plum-pudding, and blind-man’s-buff. How the dear Meta had sent a cart to Cocksmoor to bring Cherry herself, and how many slices everybody had eaten, and how the bride’s health had been drunk by the children in real wine, and how they had all played, Norman and all, and how Hector had made Blanche bold enough to extract a raisin from the flaming snap-dragon. It was not half told when Dr. May came home, and Ethel went up to dress for her dinner at Abbotstoke, Mary following to help her and continue her narration, which bade fair to entertain Margaret the whole evening.
Dr. May, Richard, and Ethel had a comfortable dark drive to the Grange, and, on arriving, found Hector deep in ‘Wild Sports of the West’, while Norman and Meta were sitting over the fire talking, and Mr. Rivers was resting in his library.
And when Ethel and Meta spent the time before the gentlemen came in from the dining-room, in a happy tete-a-tete, Ethel learned that the fire-light dialogue had been the pleasantest part of the whole day, and that Meta had had confided to her the existence of Decius Mus—a secret which Ethel had hitherto considered as her own peculiar property, but she supposed it was a pledge of the sisterhood, which Meta professed with all the house of May.
CHAPTER VIII.
The rest all accepted the kind invitation,
And much bustle it caused in the plumed creation;
Such ruffling of feathers, such pruning of coats,
Such chirping, such whistling, such clearing of throats,
Such polishing bills, and such oiling of pinions,
Had never been known in the biped dominions.
Peacock at Home.
Etheldred was thankful for that confidence to Meta Rivers, for without it, she would hardly have succeeded in spurring Norman up to give the finishing touches to Decius, and to send him in. If she talked of the poem as the devotion of Decius, he was willing enough, and worked with spirit, for he liked the ideas, and enjoyed the expressing them, and trying to bring his lines to his notion of perfection, but if she called it the “Newdigate,” or the “Prize Poem,” and declared herself sure it would be successful, he yawned, slackened, leaned back in his chair, and began to read other people’s poetry, which Ethel was disrespectful enough not to think nearly as good as his own.
It was completed at last, and Ethel stitched it up with a narrow red and white ribbon—the Balliol colours; and set Meta at him till a promise was extorted that he would send it in.
And, in due time, Ethel received the following note:
“My Dear Ethel,—