‘You acknowledge it, then?’
‘Certainly. It is a list so bare that one must be ashamed of it. Not even one name!’
‘What about James, the redoubtable?’
‘Oh, if you are going to be stupid!’ says she; and, rising with a pretty show of scorn, she leaves him. It is not entirely her scorn of him, however, that leads her to this drastic step; it is an appealing glance from Betty, who is sitting near her aunt, looking perplexed in the extreme. There is cause for perplexity. Next to Miss Barry sits the poet! Unfortunately Miss Barry has heard a great deal about this young man and all his works, and plainly considers it her duty to live up to him, if possible, during his visit to the Rectory. She has now put on quite a literary air and her best spectacles, and is holding forth on literature generally, with a view to impressing him. She succeeds beyond her expectations. The great Jones, who is reclining beside her in an artistic attitude, becomes by degrees smitten into stone, so great, so wondrously surprising, are some of her utterances. Through all his astonishment, however, he holds on to the artistic pose. Having struck it with the intention of conquering Susan, he refuses to alter it until, at all events, she has had a good look. It may be a long time, poor girl! before she will get the chance of seeing anything like it again.
‘What’s the matter with his leg?’ asks Dom, who has just come up, in a whisper to Betty. ‘It’s got turned round, hasn’t it?’
‘It looks broken,’ says Betty. ‘But it’s all right. It’s a way he has with it. For goodness’ sake, Dom, stop auntie, if you can.’
But auntie is enjoying herself tremendously, and now, seeing her audience greatly increased, and the poet evidently much struck, her voice rises higher, and she beams on all around her.
‘My two favourite authors,’ she is now saying, ‘are—and I’m sure you will agree with me, dear Lady Forster, and you too, Mr. Jones: your opinion’—with alarming flattery—‘is indeed important—my two favourite authors are dear Wilkie Trollope and Anthony Collins!’
Great sensation! Naturally everyone is impressed by this startling declaration, and Miss Forbes is actually overcome. At all events, she subsides behind her parasol, and is for a little time lost in thought.
‘Yes, yes. Charming people—charming!’ says Lady Forster quickly, if a little hysterically; and the poet, having seen Susan’s eye upon him and his pose, and feeling that he has not endured the last half-hour in vain, struggles into a more every-day attitude. Pins and needles, however, having set in in the most posé of the legs, he is conscious of a good deal of unpleasantness, and at last a desire to get up. Essaying to rise, however, it distinctly declines to support him, and, to his everlasting chagrin, he falls ‘plop’ upon the ground again, in a painfully inartistic position this time.