“It has, Freddy, it has!” insisted Kitty. “Only consider! If you were to offer for me, and I should accept your offer, Lord and Lady Legerwood would wish to see me, would they not?”
“Have seen you,” Freddy said, entering a caveat.
“Well, yes, but not at all lately. They—they would wish to present me to their acquaintance! Freddy, don’t you think your mama would invite me to stay with her, in Mount Street? Just for one little month?”
Mr. Standen, perceiving a straw, clutched at it. “Tell you what, Kit! Ask my mother to invite you. Fond of me: very likely to do it to oblige me. No need to be betrothed!”
For a moment her eyes brightened; then they clouded again, and she sighed, and shook her head. “It wouldn’t serve. Ever since the buttered lobsters Uncle Matthew is convinced that he has only a few months to live! He had a dreadful colic, you know, and nothing will persuade him that it was only the lobsters, which he would eat for supper! He says his heart is very weak, and that Dr. Fenwick is a clodpole. That’s why there is all this bustle about his Will. He is determined to provide for me before he dies, so, you see, he could never be prevailed upon to let me go to London if I were still unbetrothed. He would be bound to suspect I should elope with a half-pay officer.”
“I don’t see that,” objected Freddy, painfully following the gist of this tumultuous speech.
“Well, I don’t either,” admitted Kitty, “but it is what he always says, whenever I have asked him if I might not go to London. He has the greatest dislike of military men, and when the militia were quartered in the neighbourhood he would scarcely allow me even to walk to the village. But if I were betrothed to you, Freddy, he could not refuse to let me go on that score. He could not refuse on any score, because if Lady Legerwood would be so obliging as to invite me to Mount Street it would not cost him a penny above my coach-fare. And there can be not the least necessity for Fish to go too, so that he may be sure that things will go on at Arnside just as they should.”
“Yes, but—”
“And, Freddy, only think! He said that if I became engaged to one of you he would give me a hundred pounds for my bride-clothes! A—hundred—pounds, Freddy!”
“You know, Kit,” said Mr. Standen, momentarily diverted, “dashed if he ain’t the kind of fellow who behaves scaly to waiters! A Plum wouldn’t buy the half of your bride-clothes! Forget how much blunt m’father dropped when Meg was married, but—”