“These girls are clever,” she said to Lady Charlotte. “They don't bustle too much. They don't make too distinct a difference of tone with the different sets. I shall propose Miss Pole as secretary to our Pin and Needle Relief Society.”
“Do,” was the reply. “There is also the Polish Dance Committee; and, if she has any energy left, she might be treasurer to the Ladies' General Revolution Ball.”
“That is an association with which I am not acquainted,” said Lady Gosstre, directing her eye-glass on the field. “Here comes young Pole. He's gallant, they tell me, and handsome: he studies us too obviously. That's a mistake to be corrected, Charlotte. One doesn't like to see a pair of eyes measuring us against a preconception quelconque. Now, there is our Ionian Am...but you have corrected me, Merthyr:—host, if you please. But, see! What is the man doing? Is he smitten with madness?”
Mr. Pericles had made a furious dash at the band in the centre of the lawn, scattered their music, and knocked over the stands. When his gesticulations had been observed for some moments, Freshfield Sumner said: “He has the look of a plucked hen, who remembers that she once clapped wings, and tries to recover the practice.”
“Very good,” said Lady Gosstre. She was not one who could be unkind to the professional wit. “And the music-leaves go for feathers. What has the band done to displease him? I thought the playing was good.”
“The instruments appear to have received a dismissal,” said Lady Charlotte. “I suppose this is a clearing of the stage for coming alarums and excursions. Behold! the 'female element' is agitated. There are—can you reckon at this distance, Merthyr?—twelve, fourteen of my sex entreating him in the best tragic fashion. Can he continue stern?”
“They seem to be as violent as the women who tore up Orpheus,” said Lady Gosstre.
Tracy Runningbrook shrieked, in a paroxysm, “Splendid!” from his couch on the sward, and immediately ran off with the idea, bodily.
“Have I stumbled anywhere?” Lady Gosstre leaned to Mr. Powys.
He replied with a satiric sententiousness that told Lady Gosstre what she wanted to know.