The application brought Felix in, demanding, 'Are you gone crazy, Lance?'
'I thought I might as well titivate myself for the tithe dinner this evening.'
'You need not trouble yourself about that. You'll not dine with us; and if you did, the farmers would excuse you. I thought you were only too glad of an apology for cultivating that furze brake.'
'One may as well be fit to be seen.'
'Exactly my sentiments,' said Felix; 'but you must submit for the present. If you say any more, I shall lock up all my razors from the raving lunatic.'
'Yes,' added Clement. 'Would you like an axe at the same time, to cut off your head?'
Lance subsided; and Felix walked back to his room, and smiled to the risk of his own cheeks over his shaving, as he muttered, 'Tithe dinner, quotha?'
The tithe and rent dinner were always combined soon after Christmas, and the Squire and Vicar had agreed that it was best not to make it a wholesale entertainment at the Rood, but to have a civilized party in the Priory, bringing the guests into the drawing-room afterwards. The numbers of superior tenants were not sufficient to make this unmanageable, and the compliment was appreciated. One or two elderly men might have preferred devouring the value of their tithe at the inn, and enjoying subsequent tobacco and spirits, but most liked the being treated as gentlemen; and the evening was always an odd mixture of boredom, amusement, and gratification.
The audit occupied most of the day, and the dinner was at the primitive hour of six, the ladies of the house appearing thereat. Gertrude, who was worked up to think it capital fun, was warned to deck herself in her best; and she rejoiced that Ethel had enforced preparations for possible gaieties, so that she could appear in a pink silk, presented to her for Mrs. Rivers's last public occasion, and a wreath of clematis.
Her splendours were not thrown away, for the Squire met her on the stairs, and exclaimed, 'That's right, I'm grateful to you;' and next moment she saw Mrs. Harewood uncloaking, and revealing the black velvet her husband always urged on her, and a set of pearls that had not seen the light since the last old aunt retired into old-maidenhood. The Vale Leston opinion was that Mrs. Harewood was the finest woman to look at who had existed since her great-grandmother, Lady Geraldine.