"You'll create ill feeling," says Mr. Browne. "The Stanley girls have new gowns, and they want to show them. They'll say nasty things about you."
"That's your second hint on that subject," says Sir Mark. "Get it out, Dicky, you are dying to say something. What was it you were going to say a few minutes ago about some fellow who—?"
"Who for seven years was going to give a ball, and was asked everywhere on the strength of it. His friends hoped against hope, don't you see, but nothing ever came of it. At the end of the seven years he was as far off it as ever."
"And what did his friends do to him then," asks Julia, who is one of those people who always want more than enough.
"Deponent sayeth not," says Mr. Browne. "Perhaps it was too dark a tale for publication. I suppose they either smote him between the joints of his harness till he died, or else they fell upon him in a body and rent him in pieces."
"What nonsense you can talk at times," says Mrs. Beaufort, mindful of his speech of a few moments ago.
"Not I," says Dicky Browne.
It is about four o'clock, and already the shadows are lengthening upon the grass, the soft, cool grass upon which they are all sitting beneath the shade of the huge chestnut trees, that fling their branches in all directions, some east, some west, some heavenwards.
A little breeze is blowing towards them sweet essences of pinewood and dark fir. Above in the clear sky the fleecy clouds assume each moment a new form—a yet more tender color—now pale blue, now gray, now a soft pink that verges upon crimson. Down far in the hollows a white mist is floating away, away, to the ocean, and there, too, can be seen (playing hide and seek amongst the great trunks of the giant elms) the flitting forms of the children dancing fantastically to and fro.
The scent of dying meadow-sweet is on the air, and the hush and the calm of evening.