“How, then, little woman, what is it? Quick, please, for I want to be off.”
“There is an invitation just arrived from Allerton House for Tuesday week. What am I to say?”
“Oh, we must go, of course. I want you to get intimate with Lady Allerton, she’s a charming woman, and Lord George is a good little fellow in his way, though an awfully bad shot. Dinner, I suppose?”
“Yes; but, Harry, wait one moment and listen to me!” exclaimed Alice. “You need not be in such a hurry; you will have plenty of time for that horrid shooting before six o’clock.”
“Horrid shooting, indeed! Much you know about it,” muttered the victimised sportsman, inwardly chafing at the delay; “it will be horrid shooting in one sense, if I am hindered much longer. The scent won’t lie when the dew is off, and I may as well go out with a walking-stick as with a gun, for there will be nothing to shoot at.”
“Well, I’ll let you go directly, you impatient, silly boy,” returned Alice, smiling at the serious, business-like view her husband took of his amusement. “The only thing I wish to say is, that if we accept this invitation, we shall be almost certain to meet the Duke and Duchess of Brentwood there; and you know I’ve been waiting for you to go with me, day after day, and I’ve never returned their visit yet. You must take me to call before Tuesday week; I’ve been quite rude already.”
“All right,” returned Harry; “we’ll go in style, and call on the old duchess. I’ll wear a red coat, and stick a peacock’s feather in my hat, if that will please you. It’s a pity she’s so like a Chimpanzee! Most probably she is related to the monkey tribe—suppose we ask her when we call; it will be a new and original style of conversation, eh? Well, ta ta! It’s so late now that I’m afraid you won’t have the felicity of seeing me again till dinner-time;” and without allowing his wife an opportunity of remonstrating, Harry closed the door, and was soon paying off the long-bills in a way in which they scarcely approved of having their “little accounts” settled. Alice watched him depart with a smile, which faded into a sigh as she turned to write an acceptance to the dinner invitation, and then employ and amuse herself as best she might, during the weary hours which must elapse ere her husband would return.
Lord Allerton was the eldest son of the Duke and Duchess of Brentwood, who were the great people, par excellence, of the Coverdale Park neighbourhood; and when the Duke and Duchess came to spend their Christmas in the country, Alice, stimulated thereunto by the conversation of the Mesdames Jones, Brown, and Robinson of those parts, felt slightly curious to know whether these ancient and venerable limbs of the aristocracy would deign to honour her by a call, and was proportionably gratified and bored when, on a dreary morning, the dull old Duchess came and paid her a singularly heavy and uninteresting visit. To induce Harry to accompany her when she returned this equally flattering and alarming civility, had been for several days the sole object of Alice’s existence,—an object in which, as the reader may perceive by the foregoing conversation, she had hitherto been unsuccessful.
The next morning Alice once again made an attempt to entice her better half away from the pleasures of the plains; but the rabbits had begun barking the young ash-trees in a favourite plantation, and were to be “pulled down” accordingly. This occupation lasted several days; at the expiration of which period certain poachers, choosing to join in the amusement uninvited, had to be “pulled up” for their iniquities—a series of ups and downs which left only two days vacant before the important Tuesday dedicated to the dinner-party at Allerton would arrive. The first of these days it rained cats and dogs, and snowed fragments of polar bears so decidedly, that even Harry could not get out till about half-past three, when, in desperation, he enveloped himself in a Macintosh, and galloped over to the town, five miles off (as all towns are from all country houses), to match some ribbon for Alice, and look at the newspaper on his own account. The County Press was just out, and therein Harry perceived a leading article attacking the decision arrived at by himself and his brother magistrates in the case of the “pulled up” poachers. This being equally irritating and interesting, he sat down in the reading-room of the library diligently to peruse the same—phsa-ing, pish-ing, and “confounding the fellow” at every second line. He had just got to a paragraph beginning, “Mr. C—d—le may be well qualified to lead the way across a stiff line of country after the hounds, or roll over unoffending hares and rabbits in a battue—but that is no proof that he possesses an equal right to ride rough-shod over the enactments of a British Parliament, or to overturn the decrees of abler lawyers than are to be found among the bench of magistrates at H————,” when a large hand was placed over his eyes, and a loud, jovial voice exclaimed—
“Never mind, Harry, my boy—little Flipkins the editor’s got a wife with the devil’s own temper, and she helps him to write the leaders; she took a dislike to you when she was Miss Jamby, and kept the confectioner’s shop, when you neglected her, and flirted with the girl behind the counter, because she happened to be the prettiest, and now she’s paying you off; you can’t horsewhip a woman, you know, so you’d better take it easy.”