“My dear, strange Basil!” said Mrs. Jericho, with an incredulous laugh.
“Shall endeavour to leave five pounds a-year, to have that epitaph grown over me in mustard and cress. Five pounds a-year, ma’am, to the sexton, to keep my memory green.”
“I wonder what Miss Carraways would say if she heard you. But I know better,” said Monica. “I think, Agatha, we had better bespeak our posts as bridesmaids.”
“Wouldn’t suffer it, my darling girls,” said Basil. “If ever I was to marry—not that I ever shall; no, no,—I shall walk through the world with the mustard-and-cress steadily in my eye—you shouldn’t come near my wife. No, no; you’re too good, too fine, too embroidered, for the plain work of matrimony. Bless your little filagree hearts, before you marry you ought to perform quarantine in cotton, and serve seven years to pies and puddings.”
“Now, my dear, dear Basil”—
But Edwin, entering with a letter, destroyed Mrs. Jericho’s sentence in its early syllables.
“How curious!” cried Mrs. Jericho. “A letter from Mrs. Carraways. I know her dear hand from all my friends: there is such a flow of the lady about it. Ha! the party. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Carraways request the honour of—’ yes; we are all invited. This is to be the great fête of the season. Jogtrot Lodge will be burningly brilliant. The richest people will be there, and I have heard,” and Mrs. Jericho lowered her voice, “I have heard, some of the nobility.”
“No doubt,” said Basil; “just a lord or two, to keep ’em sweet.”
“Really, Basil, you ought to go and live in a cave, upon wild elder-berries; you ought,” said Monica; and then she turned to her parent, with a look of touching helplessness. “But, my dear mamma; how are we to go?”
“Yes, mamma,” said the forlorn Agatha, “how are we to go?”