“Know whom, Cary?”
“Mr Raymond.”
“Is he your Whig?” asked Ephraim, laughing. “Pray, don’t make him into mincemeat; he is one of the best men in England.”
“He need be,” said I; “he is a horrid Whig! What do you, being friends with such a man?”
“He is a very good man, Cary. He was one of my tutors at school. I never knew what his politics were before to-night.”
We were silent for a while; and then Grandmamma sent for me, not, as I feared, to scold me for being loud-spoken and warm, but to tell me that one of my lappets hung below the other, and I must make Perkins alter it before Tuesday. I do not know how I bore the rest of the evening.
When I went up at last to our chamber, I found it empty. Lucette, Grandmamma’s French woman, who waits on her, while Perkins is rather my Aunt Dorothea’s and ours, came in to tell me that Perkins was gone to bed with a headache, and hoped that we would allow her to wait on us to-night, when she was dismissed by the elder ladies.
“Oh, I want no waiting at all,” said I, “if somebody will just take the pins out of my head-dress carefully. Do that, Lucette, and then I shall need nothing else, I cannot speak for the other young ladies.”
Lucette threw a wrapping-cape over my shoulders, and began to remove the pins with deft fingers. Grandmamma had not yet come up-stairs.
“Mademoiselle Agnes looks charmante to-night,” said she: “but then she is always charmante. But what has Mademoiselle Flore? So white, so white she is! I saw her through the door.”