“I do not know why you should say so,” replied the Rector stiffly. “Indeed, I am at a loss to understand why you should be so anxious to have me offer for a lady whom you apparently hold in such poor esteem! If I did not believe her to be a well-brought-up young woman to whom such persons as my cousin Jack must be repugnant—”
“Yes, well, that is more of your humbug!” interrupted his lordship. “You may be a handsome fellow, Hugh, but you are not an out-and-outer, like Jack!”
“I have no wish to be an out-and-outer, as you term it,” said Hugh, more stiffly still. “Nor do I regard his absence or his presence as being of any particular consequence.”
“Oh, don’t sham it so!” exclaimed Biddenden, flinging down a copy of the Gentleman’s Magazine. “If you fancy, my dear brother, that because he gave you your living my uncle prefers you above his other great-nephews you very much mistake the matter! I wonder you will talk such gammon, I do, indeed! Jack has always been my uncle’s favourite, and so you know! He means Kitty to choose him, depend upon it, and that is why he is so devilish out of humour! I marvel at his having invited any of the rest of us, upon my soul I do!”
Lord Dolphinton, who occasionally disconcerted his relations by attending to what they said, here raised his eyes from the book on his knees, and interpolated: “Uncle said he didn’t invite you, George. Said he didn’t know why you came. Said—”
“Nonsense! You know nothing of the matter!” said Lord Biddenden.
Lord Dolphinton’s understanding was not powerful, nor was it one which readily assimilated ideas; but once it had received an impression it was tenacious. “Did say so!” he insisted. “Said it last night, when you arrived. Said it again this morning. Said it—”
“Very well, that will do!” said his cousin testily.
Lord Dolphinton was not to be so easily silenced. “Said it when we sat down to nuncheon,” he continued, ticking the occasion off on one bony finger. “Said it at dinner. Said if you didn’t care for your mutton you needn’t have come, because he didn’t invite you. I ain’t clever, like you fellows, but when people say things to me once or twice I can remember them.” He observed that this simple declaration of his powers had bereft his cousin of words, and retired again, mildly pleased, into his book.
Lord Biddenden exchanged a speaking look with his brother; but Hugh merely remarked that it was very true, and that in such a contemptuous voice that Biddenden was goaded into saying: “Well, at all events, it is as much to the purpose that I have come as that Dolphinton has! Folly!”