“No; I had rather more than I cared for the last time we were out, the day of the picnic. I’ve had neuralgia in my face ever since that evening, we were all kept out so late.”
“Oh, my! That neuralgia’s a horrid thing,” said Francie sympathetically. “I didn’t get any harm out of it with all the wetting and the knock on my head and everything. I thought it was lovely fun! But”—forgetting her shyness in the interest of the moment—“Mr. Hawkins told me that Cursiter said to him the world wouldn’t get him to take out ladies in his boat again!”
Miss Hope-Drummond raised her dark eyebrows.
“Really? That is very crushing of Captain Cursiter.”
Francie felt in a moment an emphasis on the word Captain; but tried to ignore her own confusion.
“It doesn’t crush me, I can tell you! I wouldn’t give a pin to go in his old boat. I’d twice sooner go in a yacht, upsets and all!”
“Oh!”
Miss Hope-Drummond said no more than this, but her tone was sufficient. Her eyes strayed towards the book that lay in her lap, and the finger inserted in its pages showed, as if unconsciously, a tendency to open it again.
There was another silence, during which Francie studied the dark and unintelligible oil-paintings on the expanses of wall, the flowers, arranged with such easy and careless lavishness in strange and innumerable jars and vases; and lastly, Dinah, in a distant window, catching and eating flies with disgusting avidity. She felt as if her petticoats showed her boots more than was desirable, that her gloves were of too brilliant a tint, and that she ought to have left her umbrella in the hall. At this painful stage of her reflections she heard Lady Dysart’s incautious voice outside:
“It’s always the way with Christopher; he digs a hole and buries himself in it whenever he’s wanted. Take her out and let her eat strawberries now; and then in the afternoon—” the voice suddenly sank as if in response to an admonition, and Francie’s already faint heart sank along with it. Oh, to be at the Hemphills, making toffee on the parlour fire, remote from the glories and sufferings of aristocratic houses! The next moment she was shaking hands with Pamela, and becoming gradually aware that she was in an atmosphere of ease and friendliness, much as the slow pleasure of a perfume makes itself slowly felt. The fact that Pamela had on a grass hat of sunburnt maturity, and a skirt which bore the imprint of dogs’ paws was in itself reassuring, and as they went together down a shrubbery walk, and finally settled upon the strawberry beds in the wide, fragrant kitchen-garden, the first terrors began to subside in Francie’s trembling soul, and she found herself breathing more naturally in this strange, rarefied condition of things. Even luncheon was less formidable than she had expected. Christopher was not there, the dreaded Sir Benjamin was not there, and Lady Dysart consulted her about the cutting-out of poor clothes, and accepted with an almost alarming enthusiasm the suggestions that Francie diffidently brought up from the depths of past experience of the Fitzpatrick wardrobe.