When Freddy arrived in Berkeley Square that evening, she could scarcely restrain her impatience to take him apart, and pour her apprehensions into his ear; but as it lacked only a few minutes to the dinner-hour, and Meg had already joined her in the drawing-room, this was clearly ineligible. Moreover, it immediately became apparent that grave cares were pressing upon Freddy’s soul, for upon his sister’s demanding of him, in a rallying tone, whether Charles had already descended on the town, he replied: “No, term don’t end for another ten days. It’s worse than that! Dashed if I didn’t receive a letter from him this morning! Yes, and what’s more, I had to pay sixpence for it, which I’d as lief not have done. It ain’t that I grudge sixpence, but what I mean is, why the deuce should I have to give sixpence for a thing I’d as soon, not have?”
“Oh, heavens, is he in a scrape?” exclaimed Meg.
“Well, of course he is! Knew that as soon as I saw the letter! Stands to reason! What would he want to write to me for, if he hadn’t made a cake of himself in some way or another? Never knew such a fellow! Mind, I daresay it’s only some snyder dunning him, but there’s nothing for it: I shall have to take a bolt to Oxford tomorrow.”
“Going out of town now1.” cried Kitty.
“Yes, but I shan’t be gone above one night. Dashed inconvenient, but the thing is, if Charlie’s landed himself in the basket, must pull him out! Fond of him,” he added, on an explanatory note. “Besides—wouldn’t do for it to come to m’father’s ears!”
“No, indeed! Of course you must go! I hope you may not find that anything very serious is amiss.”
“Yes, I hope so too,” said Freddy. “Because if it’s anything that means I must go and talk to the Bag-wig—what I mean is, the Dean—it’s no use going to Oxford at all, because I don’t suppose he’d listen to me. Never did when I was up myself, and dashed well had to talk to him. Not that I wanted to, mind you, but there it was: obliged to!”
“Could it be that Charlie has become entangled?” suggested Meg, looking anxious.
Freddy rubbed his nose. “Got into the muslin-company? Might, of course, though he ain’t one for the petticoats. Oh, well, if that’s all it is, nothing to worry about! Buy her off!”
On this comforting thought, they all went in to dinner. The lighthearted insouciance which characterized the Standens had its effect upon Kitty; and her desponding mood soon changed to one of hope. She was still quite unable to see any way in which she could help Olivia to overcome her troubles, but the cheerful nonchalance with which Freddy confronted the task of rescuing his graceless junior from whatever dire straits he had fallen into insensibly made her feel that the tangle caused by her cousin’s descent upon London would not be beyond his power to unravel.