"Is not Alfred wicked?" said his wife.
"And you are really off to Bath the day after to-morrow?" asked he. "And are going to drive all the way in your car? Though, of course, with a car like yours it is no distance at all. Sometimes I see your car on one horizon, and then, whizz, you are out of sight again over the other. But no noise, no dust, no smell. But the speed limit, Mrs. Hancock? I am tempted to say no speed limit, either."
He refrained from this audacious suggestion, and continued—
"Such an excellent steady fellow, too, you have in Denton. I always see my friend Denton coming in during the Psalms after he has taken your car home, and if he has to leave again in the middle of the sermon, I'm sure he only does at the call of duty what half the congregation would do for pleasure if they had the courage. They have my sympathy. How bored I should get if I had to listen to a long-winded parson every Sunday."
Mrs. Hancock cast an anxious eye on the asparagus. But there was a perfect haystack of it.
"How much I enjoyed your sermon last Sunday," said she, "about the duty of being cheerful and happy, and doing all we can to make ourselves happy for the sake of others. Oh, you must take more asparagus! Ellis would be miserable if it was not all eaten. It is only the second time we have had it this year."
For the moment she thought of telling Mr. Martin to supply himself with asparagus while she was at Bath. But the duty of making herself happy prevailed, and she refrained, for it occurred to her that Ellis might dispatch daily bundles early in the morning in cardboard boxes, so that they would reach Bath in time to be cooked for dinner. The hotel commissariat would certainly not rise to asparagus so early in the season.
Mrs. Martin in the meantime, with one sycophantic ear open to catch her husband's jokes, was full of fancy ejaculations to Mr. Beaumont, who was describing to her the romantic history of the female oak-egger, which exercised so extraordinary a fascination on all young males for miles around. Here Mr. Dobbs was lacking in felicity, for he remarked that a great many unmarried young ladies would be glad to know how the female oak-egger did it. But Mr. Beaumont made it unnecessary for Mrs. Dobbs even to frown at him, so rapidly did he wonder whether it was called an oak-egger because it laid upwards of a million eggs. Then Mrs. Hancock called the attention of the table generally to the fact that the gooseberry tartlets were the produce of the garden—the first of the year—and Mr. Martin alluded to the Feast of the Blessed Innocents, saying that even massacre had a silver lining, though not for the massacred. A savoury of which Mr. Dobbs was easily induced to take a second helping brought dinner to what musicians call "a full close."
Then came the moment of the evening. Port was ruthlessly supplied by Lind to all the guests, whether they wanted it or not, and Mrs. Hancock rose with her kind brown eyes moist with emotion.
"Ladies and gentlemen," she said, "I have a toast to propose. I ask you to drink the health of my dear daughter and of Edward Holroyd, my future son-in-law. Your health, my dear, dear children!"