“How brave you are!” Cecilia said wonderingly. “I do not know how you can bear it!”
“What, your brother’s tantrums? I see nothing to be afraid of in them!”
Cecilia shuddered. “It is not being afraid precisely, but I dread people being angry and thundering at me! I cannot help it, Sophy, and I know it is poor spirited of me, but my knees shake so, and I feel quite sick!”
“Well, they shan’t be made to shake today,” said Sophy cheerfully. “I am going to spike Charles’s guns. Oh, see! There is Francis Wolvey! The very thing! He shall restore you to Addy for me.”
She drew up as she spoke, and Lord Francis, who had been chatting to two ladies in a landaulet, came up to the phaeton,
“Sophy, a capital turnout! ’Servant, Miss Rivenhall! I wonder to see you trust yourself to such a madcap, I do indeed! She overturned me in a gig once. A gig!”
“What an unhandsome thing to say!” said Sophy indignantly. “As though I could have helped it on such, a road. Grenada! Oh, dear, what a long time ago it seems, to be sure!
“I came up with Sir Horace, and stayed with Mrs. Scovell,” supplied Lord Francis. “She was the only lady living at Headquarters that winter and used to hold loo parties. Do you remember?”
“Of course I do! And more vividly still the fleas in that dreadful village! Francis, I must pick up John Potton and be off. Will you escort my cousin to meet her little brother and sisters? They were walking with their governess somewhere beside the Drive.”
Lord Francis, upon whom Cecilia’s beauty had made a great impression when he had met her on the occasion of his calling in Berkeley Square, promptly said that nothing would give him more pleasure, and reached up his hands to help her down from the phaeton. He said that he hoped that they would not too speedily encounter the schoolroom party, and Cecilia, not impervious to his easy, friendly address, and evident admiration, began to look more cheerful.