“Mrs. O. and I have put our heads together,” he said, “and I’m her ambassador, accredited, don’t they say? by her, and with authority to put propositions before you. Well, it’s just this: when that dear boy and you come down to Grote to-morrow, we want you to be master and mistress of the house, and Mrs. O. and me and Per and all the rest of them to be your guests. It’ll be for you to say what time we breakfast, and to see cook, and Claude will arrange the shoots, and give us a glass of wine after dinner if he thinks it won’t hurt us, and it’ll be found it won’t, if he sticks to the cellar as I’ve laid down for myself and of which I’ll give him the key. It’ll give you a sort of lesson, like, my dear, as to how to make your guests comfortable, as I’ll be bound you will.”
It required no gifts of perception whatever to be able to appreciate the kindness and affection of that speech, and Dora did them full justice. At the same time she could not help being conscious of many little jerks. She remembered also the party there had been at Grote shortly after her engagement, wondered if the same sort of gathering would be assembling again, and tried to think of herself as hostess to Mrs. Price, Lady Ewart, and Mrs. Per. They were really very terrible people, and on this occasion of her home-coming with Claude it was beyond all question that the badinage would be of the most superlative order. She remembered with fatal distinctness how her mother-in-law had alluded to Mrs. Per, before Dora met her, as very superior, and it seemed to her that no long and conscientious analysis of character could have arrived at a report so definitely and completely true as was the verdict conveyed by those two words. Yet she had married Claude, she loved Claude: to accept the burden of this honour was clearly one of the obligations entailed upon her, for it was Mr. Osborne’s wish, his very kindly wish, backed and originated by his wife, and there was no shadow of excuse to shelter under for declining it. So her pause before replying was not greater than could be well filled by the smile with which she greeted the proposal.
“Ah, but how dear of you,” she said cordially, “but we shall make all kinds of mistakes. Are you sure you and Mrs. Osborne are willing to risk our making a hash of your party? I shall probably forget most things, and Claude will complete it by forgetting the remainder.”
Mr. Osborne laughed.
“My dear, you fill my plate with that hash, and I’ll ask for more,” he said. “I’ll send up my plate twice for that hash, hey? That’s capital, and it will give Mrs. O. a bit of a rest, for she’s a little overdone. Indeed, I was thinking of putting off the party, but she wouldn’t hear of it. And there’s another thing, my dear. Couldn’t you manage to call me ‘Dad,’ as the boys do? It isn’t in nature that you should call Claude’s father Mr. Osborne. I know it’s a favour to ask, like, but you and me hit it off from the first, didn’t we? You was the right wife for Claude, and no mistake.”
That met with a far more spontaneous response from Dora. There was affection, kindness, as always, in what he said, but there was more than that now—namely, a pathos of a very touching kind, in his making a favour of so simple a request. Dora was ashamed of not having complied with it before it was asked.
“Why, of course,” she said. “Dad, Dad, doesn’t it come naturally? And if you talk such nonsense, Dad, about its being a favour, I shall—I shall call Claude Mr. Osborne Junior.”
He patted her hand gently.
“Thank you, my dear, thank you,” he said. “Mrs. Per calls me Mr. Osborne, as you’ve often heard, and I don’t know that with her somehow that I want her to call me different. But I know with people like you, born in another rank of life, that’s not the custom. You make pet names and what not, not that I ask that. But I should feel it as a favour, my dear, I should indeed, if you felt you could manage to say ‘Dad’ like the boys do.”
Dora held up a reproachful forefinger.