"I don't think I'd come, and I'm anything but a jolly person. I must go to my father's at once."
"Gad, Alsager, you seem to keep your father always ready to bring forward whenever you want to be misanthropical. You were to have gone to him a week ago."
"Circumstances alter cases," said Mrs. Hammond with a short laugh; "and Colonel Alsager finds London more tolerable than he expected. Is it not so, Colonel?"
"'Very tolerable, and not to be endured,' as Dogberry says, since I am about to leave it," said Laurence. ("She would like to draw me into a semi-confidence on that subject; but she sha'n't," thought he.)
"No; but really, Alsager, do try and come, there's a good fellow; you can hold over your father until you want an excuse for not going to some place where you'll be bored. Now we won't bore you; we'll take down a rattling good team Tom Charteris and his wife--she plays and sings, and all that kind of thing, capitally; and Mrs. Masters, who's quiet to ride or drive--I don't mean that exactly, but she's available in two ways,--as a widow she can chaperon, and she's quite young and pretty enough to flirt on her own hook; and the Tyrrells--nice girls those; and Bligh and Winton,--Oh, and Dollamore! I'll ask Dollamore; he'd be just the man for such a party."
"O yes, you must have Lord Dollamore," said Mrs. Hammond; "he has such a delightfully dry way of saying unpleasant things about everybody; and as he never shoots or hunts, he is a perfect treasure in a country house, and devotes himself to the ladies." She shot one hasty glance at Laurence as she said this, which he duly perceived.
"O yes," said Sir Charles, "Dollamore's sure to come. And you, Alsager,--come, you've changed your mind?"
"Upon my word, the temptation you offer me is so great, that I'm unable to resist it. Yes, I'll come."
"I thought you would," said Sir Charles carelessly.
"I knew you would," said Mrs. Hammond in an undertone; then aloud, "What, going, Colonel Alsager? Goodbye; I'm so pleased to have seen you; and looking so well too, after the climate, and all the things you've gone through."