Dame Beckley was one of the happiest women under the sun, for she had scarcely a care. Her sole idea of home management was obedience, and she obeyed her lord implicitly. Next to him she yielded no little show of duty to her daughter, who ruled her with a rod of iron, which she changed for one of steel when dealing with her father.
“Well, my dear,” said the dame, “speaking as a woman of the world, I must say I think it hardly becoming of us to keep Sir Mark here after his behaviour to us before. See how he slighted us. Fancy a man who calls himself a courtier telling a lady of title that her camomile tea that she has made with her own hands—it was the number one, my dear, flavoured with balm—was no better than poison.”
“Never mind the camomile tea, mother. I tell you I wish Sir Mark to be persuaded to stay.”
“Ah, well, my dear, if you wish it, of course he shall be pressed. I’ll tell him that you insisted—”
“Mother!”
“La! my dear, what have I done now?” cried Dame Beckley. “You quite startle me when you stamp your feet and look like that.”
“How can you be so foolish, mother? Go—go, and tell Sir Mark—insist upon his staying here.”
“Well, my dear, and very proud he ought to be, I’m sure. Why, when I was young, if a gentleman had—”
“Mother!”
“There, there, my dear, I’ve done. I’ll try and persuade Sir Mark to stay. I’m sure it would do him good, though I don’t want him. It always seems to me that that terrible explosion sent a regular jar through what Master Furton, the Queen’s chirurgeon, called the absorbens. If he were my son, I should certainly make him take a spoonful of my conserve of elder night and morning, and drink agrimony tea three times a day. In cases where there is the slightest touch of fever there is nothing—bless the girl, why she has gone, when did she go out of the room?”