“I thought we were to lie at the Angel,” remarked Sir Peregrine.
“No,” replied his sister decidedly. “You have forgot the wretched account the Mincemans gave us of the comfort to be had there. It is the George, and I wrote to engage our rooms, on account of Mrs. Minceman warning me of the fuss and to-do she had once when they would have had her go up two pair of stairs to a miserable apartment at the back of the house.”
Sir Peregrine turned his head to grin amicably at her. “Well, I don’t fancy they’ll succeed in fobbing you off with a back room, Ju.”
“Certainly not,” replied Miss Taverner, with a severity somewhat belied by the twinkle in her eye.
“No, that’s certain,” pursued Peregrine. “But what I’m waiting to see, my love, is the way you’ll handle the old man.”
Miss Taverner looked a little anxious. “I could handle Papa, Perry, couldn’t I? If only Lord Worth is not a subject to gout! I think that was the only time when Papa became quite unmanageable.”
“All old men have gout,” said Peregrine.
Miss Taverner sighed, acknowledging the truth of this pronouncement.
“It’s my belief,” added Peregrine, “that he don’t want us to come to town. Come to think of it, didn’t he say so?”
Miss Taverner loosened the strings of her reticule, and groped in it for a slender packet of letters. She spread one of these open. “‘Lord Worth presents his compliments to Sir Peregrine and Miss Taverner and thinks it inadvisable for them to attempt the fatigues of a journey to London at this season. His lordship will do himself the honour of calling upon them in Yorkshire when next he is in the North.’ And that,” concluded Miss Taverner, “was written three months ago—you may see the date for yourself, Perry: 29th June, 1811—and not even in his own hand. I am sure it is a secretary wrote it, or those horrid lawyers. Depend upon it, Lord Worth has forgotten our very existence, because you know all the arrangements about the money we should have were made by the lawyers, and whenever there is any question to be settled it is they who write about it. So if he does not like us to come to London it is quite his fault for not having made the least attempt to come to us, or to tell us what we must do. I think him a very poor guardian. I wish my father had named one of our friends in Yorkshire, someone we are acquainted with. It is very disagreeable to be under the governance of a stranger.”