The General tried to look displeased, but he could not resist Annie for he was human after all; so, stroking her glossy curls, he told her that Mrs. Botherfille (a serious schoolmistress, who, for the trifling consideration of £300 per annum, condescended to allow the youthful female aristocracy of the land to sit at her feet and learn from her lips how to regenerate society through the medium of frivolous accomplishments) had failed in curing her of talking nonsense, at which Annie laughed merrily and then tripped off, turning as she passed Lewis to take a last glance at the newly-arranged flowers, and saying, “Now, don’t they look pretty, Mr. Arundel?”
As the directions in regard to Lewis and his pupil’s separate establishment (for such the isolated suite of rooms they were to occupy might be considered) had not as yet been communicated to the servants, General Grant requested the favour of Lewis’s company at breakfast with as much ceremony as he could have used if he had been inviting a royal duke to a banquet; and as a request from such a quarter was equivalent to a command, Lewis could only comply. Half a minute before the clock struck nine, Miss Livingstone, that human hedge-hog, rustled into the breakfast-room, more stiff and starched in mind and body than any other living creature. As for her cap, a railway train might have passed over it without injuring that rigid mystery, while her gown was at the least sabre, not to say bullet-proof. If ever there were a wife fitted for our Iron Duke, that adamantine spinster was the woman—only that to have married her would have required more courage than twenty Waterloos!
As the clock struck nine the household servants made their appearance, and all the family knelt down (with the exception of Miss Livingstone, who, being evidently fashioned as the ancients believed elephants to be, without knee-joints, merely reared up against the breakfast-table, as the next best thing she could do), while the General read them a short, sharp, but polite prayer, after which he blessed them very much as if he were doing the reverse, and suffered them to depart. The breakfast was excellent as far as the commissariat department was concerned, and the tea was not so cold as might have been expected considering that Miss Livingstone poured it out.
Even Lewis’s short acquaintance with that austere virgin’s usual expression of countenance led him to believe that a darker shade than ordinary lowered upon her brow; nor was he mistaken, for after despatching a piece of dry toast with the air of an acidulated martyr, the spirit (we fear it was not an amiable one) moved her, and she spoke.
“I must say, General, your benevolence has rather overpowered your judgment, to my poor thinking, in this singular addition to the establishment at Broadhurst. I really consider that I ought to have been a little more clearly informed as to the facts of the case before these new arrangements were actually decided on.”
“If you refer to Sir Walter Desborough, madam,” returned the General sternly, “I must recall to your memory the fact of my having mentioned to you, this day week, my intention that my ward should reside at Broadhurst.”
“I am not in the habit of forgetting any communication you do me the honour of making to me, General Grant, nor have I forgotten the conversation to which you refer; but if you mentioned that your ward was a dangerous idiot, and that you expected me to preside over a private lunatic asylum, that circumstance certainly has escaped me.” The wrinkles on the General’s forehead deepened as he replied with a glance towards Lewis, “You forget, Miss Livingstone, that we are not in private.”
“Really,” rejoined the lady, “if, as I believe, that young” (and she laid an ill-natured emphasis on the word) “gentleman has undertaken the duties of keeper——”
“Tutor,” interposed the General sharply.
“Well, tutor, then, if you like to call it so,” continued Miss Livingstone, “the name does not much signify. But if Mr. Arundel is to have the care of this dreadful boy, the sooner he knows what his duties will be, and sets about them, the better; for I tell you plainly, General Grant, that unless there’s a man about the creature who can manage him, I won’t sleep another night in the house with him. There’s no trusting those idiots; we may all be murdered in our beds.”