Adelaide Maud, in her silent corner of the carriage, felt her third pang of that memorable afternoon.
CHAPTER VIII
The Party
Nobody knew how anybody got dressed for the party, and certainly nobody took any dinner to speak of. It was laid in the morning-room, and Mr. Leighton said throughout that roystering meal that never again, no matter how many ribs Cuthbert broke or how much sympathy he excited, would he allow them to have a party.
The occasion became memorable, not only because of Cuthbert or the mayonnaise, or the Dudgeons, but because on that night Robin Meredith appeared. Mabel and Jean lately had already in quite a practical manner begun to wonder whom Mabel would be obliged to marry. Jean was getting very tall, and showed signs of being so near the grown-up stage herself, that she was anxious to see Mabel disposed of, so as to leave the way clear.
"The eldest of four ought to look sharp," she declared; "we can't allow any trifling."
This seemed rather overwhelming treatment of Mabel, who was only seventeen. But viewed from that age, even a girl of twenty-one is sometimes voted an old maid, and Mabel was quite determined not to become an old maid.
"There seems to be only George Maclean," she had sighed in a dismal way. She was quite different from Elma, who continually dreamed of a duke. George Maclean would do very well for Mabel, only, as Jean complained, "George Maclean is a gentleman and all that kind of thing, but he has no prospects." So they rather disposed of George Maclean, for immediate purposes at least. Then came Mr. Meredith. After that, in the language of the Leightons, it was all up with Mabel. She would simply have to get engaged and married to Mr. Meredith.
Mr. Meredith was of middle height, with rather a square, fair face, and a short cut-away dark moustache. He spoke in a bright concise sort of way, and darted very quick glances at people when addressing them. He came in with the Gardiners, and after shaking hands with Mrs. Leighton he darted several quick glances round the room, and then asked abruptly of Lucy Gardiner "Who was the tall girl in white?"
Here was the point where the fortunes of the Leighton girls became at last crystallized, concrete. It is all very well to dream, but it is much pleasanter to be sure that something is really about to happen.