‘I left Willie and Mary at the window with their governess, I came to see that these other children of mine were orderly.’
‘Most proper, prudential, and exemplary Maurice!’ his sister laughed. ‘Now I have an equally hearty belief in my children being somewhere, sure to turn up when wanted. Come, I want to get out from the trees to look for Colonel Bury’s harvest moon, for I believe she is an imposition.’
‘No, I’m not coming. You, don’t understand your duties. Your young ladies ought always to know where to find you, and you where to find them.’
‘Oh! Maurice, what must you have suffered before you imported Winifred to chaperon me!’
‘You are in so mad a mood that I shall attempt only one moral maxim, and that is, that no one should set up for a chaperon, till she has retired from business on her own account.’
‘That’s a stroke at my dancing with poor Fred, but it was his only chance of speaking to me.’
‘Not particularly at the dancing.’
‘Well, then—’
‘You’ll see, by-and-bye. It was not your fault if those girls were not in all sorts of predicaments.’
‘I believe you think life is made up of predicaments. And I want to hear whether William has written to you anything about poor Fred.’