‘Will you dance?’ Christopher asked Miss Wickford.
‘I’d adore to,’ she answered, getting up just as the waiter put a nice hot quail on her plate. ‘May we?’ she asked, smiling at Mrs. Fanshawe, and floating off without waiting for an answer.
‘Ah, youth, youth,’ said Sir Musgrove, shaking his head indulgently. ‘And we greybeards console ourselves with quails.’
This was tactless of Musgrove, Mrs. Fanshawe considered, and she protested.
‘There are no greybeards here,’ protested Mrs. Fanshawe with great vigour.
‘Ah well—I speak allegorically,’ said Sir Musgrove, following Miss Wickford’s movements as she exquisitely gyrated in Christopher’s arms.
‘I should eat your quail before it gets cold, Musgrove,’ said his wife,—it was all Martha’s fault for not having put such effervescent guests on the sofa, safe behind the table where they couldn’t have got out. But some one ought to tell Mrs. Monckton not to look quite so....
‘Personally, I think it foolish to interrupt a good dinner and let it get cold,’ said Duncan Amory, who didn’t at all like the way Emily was behaving.
‘My dear friend, they are at the golden age when dinner is of no consequence,’ said Sir Musgrove. ‘A good-looking couple—a very good-looking couple,’ he added dreamily, his eye on Emily.
Well, really—hadn’t Musgrove grasped the fact that the young man was Mrs. Monckton’s husband? thought Lady Merriman, trying to catch the eye that was fixed so persistently on Miss Wickford.