“You’ve only just arrived, I hear; and, indeed, what unpromising weather you find us with! I told Papa, this morning, I was sure we shouldn’t be able to hunt; and I went and took my habit off directly after breakfast. If there’s one thing I abominate more than another, it’s a fog; and at Tilton Wood, too, of all places in the world! I’ve no idea of leaving a good fire, to go and sit there with the others, like a lot of crows in a mist; and this weather always lasts three days; and to-morrow they meet at the best place they have; and I hope you like our country?”
Mr. Sawyer could not conscientiously affirm that he had yet seen it; so he mumbled out an unintelligible answer, and the young lady went off again at score:
“Harborough’s getting quite a gay place, I declare. So many gentlemen come there now, to hunt; and it’s so convenient for the railroad; and I dare say you know Mr. Savage, and Captain Struggles, and Major Brush; and are you going to give us a Harborough ball?”
Mr. Sawyer was sufficiently experienced to take heart of grace at this juncture, and reply, “Oh, certainly—certainly! I’m sure it will be a capital ball. May we hope, Miss Dove, that you will come to it?”
The eyelashes went down immediately; and Miss D. was, no doubt, on the eve of making an appropriate reply, when the announcement of luncheon, and the simultaneous return of Paterfamilias, broke up the pair of tête-à-têtes, and the party adjourned to the dining-room, all, apparently, on pretty good terms with themselves—Mr. Sawyer inwardly proud of having got so well out of the ball difficulty; “Cissy” a little elevated with the conviction that she had made a fresh conquest (not that it was any novelty, but the feeling is always more or less agreeable); Papa ready for luncheon, and sanguine about the four-year-old; Mamma enchanted to have caught a good listener; and the Honourable Crasher in his usual state of easy and affable nonchalance.
It is only right to observe that the Rev. had exchanged his hunting costume for a suit of more clerical attire, yet, somehow, had failed to put off with his leathers an atom of his equestrian air. Even in the fullest canonicals, you never could have taken Mr. Dove for anything but a sportsman.
Why are people always so much pleasanter at luncheon than at dinner? Notwithstanding John Bull’s predilection for the latter meal, as a mode of testifying his regard, his civility, and his own respectability, I cannot help thinking that foreigners are right to ignore that heavy system of dinner-giving which we islanders regard as the very framework of our social system. There is always more or less of pomposity, and consequent restraint, attendant upon a regular set dinner in the country. A few thorough people of the world, “worldly,” know how to ask exactly the right three couple or so, and put them down to a hot dinner at a round table, such as is the very acme of all festive boards; but this is a rare quality in host and hostess. Usually, you are placed next to a guest you don’t know, and opposite to one you don’t like. Your soup is cold, your venison underdone; and the eyes of three or four servants intently watching every mouthful you swallow is destruction to a delicate appetite. In some old-fashioned houses, you may even recognise the burly coachman assisting his fellow-domestics to wait upon the company; and although, for my own part, I confess to a liking for “the smell of the stables,” I cannot but admit that the flavour is somewhat spoilt by being mixed with that of a “salmi de gibier,” or a sweetbread plastered round with spinach.
But luncheon, on the contrary, is a light, exhilarating, free-and-easy meal. Even Mr. Sawyer, as he finished his leg of pheasant and glass of brown sherry, felt wonderfully restored by his repast. “Cissy” was a good “doer” (ladies generally are, about two o’clock), and, till she had disposed of her meal, gave her neighbour a little breathing-time, and leisure to look about him.
I have often thought, although I am by no means the first person who has made the observation, both in and out of print, how true it is that it may be a huge disadvantage to a girl to be seen in company with her mother. It is sometimes discouraging enough to reflect that the coveted treasure must eventually expand into a facsimile of the dragon on guard. Fancy, if the fruit in the Gardens of the Hesperides had been eggs instead of apples, each golden shell enclosing the germ of just such a monster as was grinning at the gate! To be sure, the resemblance may cut the other way as well. I have seen mammas whom the fairest of Eve’s daughters might be proud to resemble; but it is sometimes hard upon the young Phœbe to have perpetually at her side the shapeless Mother Bunch, into the facsimile of which she must eventually grow. Mr. Sawyer, gazing intently on his hostess discussing her cutlet and glass of port-wine with considerable relish, acknowledged, though he would not accept, the warning.
Miss Dove took after Mamma rather than Papa. The matron’s red face was a brilliant colour in the girl; and the exuberant proportions of the one, suggestive of good-humour, good-living, and motherly content, were but the full, flowing outlines of perfect symmetry in the other.