“You are the strangest creature! I declare, you will be well-served if Kitty takes Dolph instead of you!”
“Well, she won’t.”
“Much you know! My dear brother, Dolph veritably haunts us! It is occasioning a good deal of remark, let me tell you!”
“Know all about that. You let Kit alone!” said Freddy.
“Oh, very well, but if you don’t take care she will fall into a scrape!” Meg said, shrugging her pretty shoulders.
However, when Freddy demanded what kind of a scrape Kitty could fall into, she was unable to think of one, and was obliged to refer in a mysterious manner to the unfortunate friendship with Miss Broughty and her relatives, hinting at dire, if unexplained, consequences. Freddy said, in a fairminded way, that he thought the Broughtys a dashed nuisance. “What I mean is, encroaching! No saying where it will end. You remember that female m’mother was kind to in Bath? Rum touch that used to come and cry all over the lodging m’father took in Laura Place? Took m’mother the better part of a year to be rid of her.”
“Good gracious, yes! Depend upon it, that is just what will happen with this Olivia! She will impose upon Kitty’s good nature in precisely the same way. But will Kitty listen to what I tell her? No! Oh, Freddy, that odious Mrs. Scorton has invited her to dine in Hans Crescent, and she says she shall go, because she cannot bear to be thought proud!”
“Lord, Meg, I should have thought you might have prevented her!” exclaimed Freddy, quite disgusted. “Easy enough to have hatched up an engagement, and said you depended upon her to be at home that evening! I’ll tell you what it is: you’ve a deal more hair than wit!”
“Oh, well!” Meg said, looking a little conscious, “I could not do that, as it chances, for I am going out myself that evening. One of Buckhaven’s old aunts: I would not subject Kitty to her odious, quizzing ways for the world!”
Freddy looked suspiciously at her, but she was rearranging her scarf, and did not meet his eyes. “Sounds to me like a hum,” he said.