"That person, papa?" asked Katharine.
"Yes, my dear, 'that person,' as you call him, with the pretty insolence which is more becoming than reasonable. And more than that, Kate, you must make yourself agreeable to that person, and we must have pleasant people to meet him, for he has done me a great service, and is likely to do me several good turns, and to be a very useful acquaintance."
"But, papa," pursued Katharine, who was accustomed to hold her ground in words, as well as to have her way in actions, "he is not in our set, or in any set, I should think. A City person, a tradesman! I really cannot see----"
"I daresay not, Kate," said her father, with a perceptible knitting of the delicately-traced eyebrows over the fine eyes, which indicated that this exquisite gentleman was not precisely the soul of patience and good temper. "I daresay not, but I can; and that is the chief matter just now. I daresay Mr. Streightley is not in any 'set,' as you say; but when you talk of him as a 'tradesman' you make a very silly and an ignorant mistake. Yes you do," he continued, in reply to an indignant look from his daughter, "though you are very clever, Katie,--almost as clever as you are handsome, my dear. Mr. Streightley is a very rich and a very influential man, and no more a tradesman than I am."
"Well then, papa," asked Katharine, "what did he mean by sending in a bill in that extraordinary way? If he is not a tradesman, what dealings with him had you, and what services has he done you?"
Mr. Guyon smiled. His daughter's naïveté amused him. "Never mind, Kate," he said. "Men have money transactions outside their household bills, my dear, or even their tailors and bootmakers; but women do not need to understand these things, and I should only bore you if I explained them. Mr. Streightley's 'bill' was a very different thing to what you imagine, and his position is, I assure you, a most respectable one. Take my word for that, Kate, and don't trouble your pretty little head about the matter. I hope we shall see a good deal of Mr. Streightley, and I wish this dinner-party to be a success; so make out your list, and see Watkins about it at once."
"Do you wish any people in particular to be asked to meet this new friend, papa?" asked Katharine, in a tone which was a little sullen, and just the least in the world impertinent, "or shall I take them, as usual, from the visiting-book?"
Mr. Guyon ignored the tone of his daughter's question, but replied to its matter by saying: "No, no one in particular; either Lady Henmarsh or Mrs. Stanbourne, of course; but you need not have any girls. I fancy Streightley knows very few people; they'll all be new to him."
"Bar, Bench, or Bishop, like Mrs. Merdle,--eh, papa?" said Katharine, as she rose from the breakfast-table, at which this dialogue had taken place. "Very well, I'll let you see my list when it's done. And now, the day?"
This point was fixed, after a little discussion; and then Katharine went to talk with her housekeeper, Mrs. Watkins, to write her notes, to dawdle over her flowers, until the horses came round; and she started for the Park with the reasonable expectation of seeing Gordon Frere--an expectation which was fulfilled before she had been five minutes in the Row.