“Delighted, I’m sure,” cried Rosa. “There’s no nicer thing to drink than Liebfraumilch, when it’s of the right year.”
“I was under the impression,” said he, scrutinizing the bottom of the cork, “that taking the bad years with the good, a chap has a better chance with Liebfraumilch than anything in that line.”
“I got it all from a catalogue—I have a good memory,” confessed Priscilla. “I hope it’s true.”
“A wine merchant’s catalogue? Gospel—absolute gospel,” said he solemnly.
He poured out half a glass and became more solemn still while he examined it in breathless silence. He held it up to the light, and the girls saw that it was a pale flame smouldering in the glass. He gave it a shake and it became a glorious topaz.
“A very fair colour indeed,” said he on the completion of these mysteries, and the girls breathed again. “Yes, I don’t know who laid it down, but I know who’ll take it up, and every time it will be with a hope that his grandsire’s halo is as good a colour. The occasion is an extremely interesting one, and the wine is almost equal to the occasion. If not, we are. Ladies and gentlemen, it is with feelings of etcetera, etcetera, that I bring to your notice the toast of the young heir now come into his inheritance. Long may he reign—I mean long may it rain, when it was the means of bringing so charming a company round his table, and so say all of us; with a—I’m extremely obliged to you, and I’ll respond later on.”
He had the aspect and the manner of a merry boy. About him there was a complete absence of self-consciousness. He treated the girls in the spirit of comradeship, and Priscilla at least felt that he must have been possessed of a certain gift of intuition to perceive that this spirit and no other was the one that was appropriate to the occasion; and moreover that he must have had other gifts that enabled him to perceive that they were the very girls to appreciate such a form of unconventional courtesy. He was in no way breezy or free-and-easy in his manner. He made fun like a schoolboy, never forcing the note; and these young women knew that he was perfectly natural from the ease with which they remained natural and with no oppression of self-consciousness in his company, in spite of the fact that the situation was not merely unconventional, but within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity, to indiscreetness, as indiscreetness would be defined by the district visitor or her relative, Mrs. Grundy.
These young women, who found themselves taking lunch and drinking wine—actually hock of a brand that was habitually highly spoken of in the catalogues—at the invitation and in the house of a young man to whom they had never been presented, were beginning to feel as if they had been acquainted with him all their life, and they made an extremely good meal. The plovers’ eggs vanished when the spatchcock had been despatched, and the cream cheese and lettuce were still occupying them when Mrs. Pearce came from the kitchen to find out if all was well, and if she should serve the coffee in the library or in the drawing-room.
“Oh, the drawing-room by all means,” cried Mr. Wingfield; and when she disappeared he whispered, “The good creature has just been to the drawing-room to take off the covers, I’m sure, and she would never forgive us if we didn’t go to see how careful she has been of everything. The only thing about it is that I couldn’t find my way from here to the drawing-room.”
“You may depend on us,” said Rosa.