'My dear aunt,' Lushington assured her, 'he's quite incapable of such a thing; it's a mistake on both sides; he wouldn't wish to intercept another fellow's aunt.'
'I wouldn't do such a thing for worlds!' protested Flushington, sincerely enough; he would not have robbed a fellow creature of a single relation of the remotest degree; and as for carrying off an aunt and a complete set of female cousins, he would have blushed (and, in fact, did blush) at the bare suspicion.
The cousins themselves had been laughing and whispering together all this time, regarding their new relation with shy admiration, very different from the manner in which they had looked at poor Flushington; the old nurse, too, was overjoyed at the exchange, and now declared that from the minute she set eyes on Flushington, she had felt something inside tell her that her Master Frank would never have turned out so undersized as him!
'Well,' said the aunt, mollified at last, 'you must forgive us for having disturbed you like this, Mr. a—Flushington' (the unfortunate man murmured that he did not mind it now); 'and now, Frank, my boy, I should like the girls to see your rooms.'
'Come along then,' said he. 'Will you let me give you something to eat?—I'll run down and see what they can let me have; and perhaps you'll kindly help me to lay the cloth; I never can lay the thing straight myself, and my old bedmaker's out of the way, as usual.'
The girls looked dubiously at one another—they were frightfully hungry still; at last the eldest, out of pure consideration for Flushington's feelings, said, 'Thank you very much, Cousin Frank—but your friend has kindly given us some lunch already.'
'Oh!' he said, 'has he though? That's really uncommonly good of you, old chap.'
But Flushington's modesty did not allow him to accept undeserved gratitude. 'I say,' he whispered, taking the other aside, 'I gave them what I could, but I'm afraid it—it wasn't much of a lunch.'
Lushington made a mental note that he would repeat his invitation when he had got his cousins outside. 'Well, look here,' he said, 'will you come and help me to row the ladies up to Byron's Pool—say in an hour from this—and we'll all come back and have a little dinner in my rooms, eh?'
'Yes, Mr. Flushington, do—do come,' the girls all entreated him, 'just to show you forgive us for taking possession of you like this.'