"How very odd! Who can be writing to me? I know nobody!"
At which simple speech Miss Gascoigne looked daggers, and, the minute
Barker was gone, spoke them too.
"I must beg you, Mrs. Grey, if only for our sakes, to be a little more circumspect. How could you let out before Barker that you 'knew nobody'?"
"It is the truth—why should I not say it?" was all Christian answered, as she opened the letters, almost the first which had come to her still unfamiliar name. "They are all invitations. Oh dear! what shall I do?"
Dr. Grey looked up at the exclamation; he never seemed to hear much of what passed around him except when his wife spoke, and then some slight movement often showed that though, silent, he was not an unobservant man.
"Invitations!" cried Miss Gascoigne; "the very thing I was expecting.
And to the best houses in Avonsbridge, too. This is the result of your
At home. I feel quite pleased at having so successfully introduced you
into good society."
"Thank you," said Christian, half amused, half—well, it is not worth while being annoyed at such a small thing. She only looked across at her husband to see how he felt on the matter.
"I think," said the master with a comical twinkling in his eye, "that no society is half so good or so pleasant as our own."
Christian looked puzzled a minute, but afterward smiled gratefully.
"We may decline it, then?"