“Oh yes!”
“And if you are dull, why, you may send a note round to invite your cousin to spend the evening with you!” suggested Sherry, forgetting that he had censured her intimacy with Mrs Hoby. “Besides, I do not go until after I have dined. I dashed off a billet to ask George to go along with us all, and he will be calling here to join me.”
But when Lord Wrotham presented himself, towards the end of dinner, he was seen to be in knee-breeches, a circumstance which made Sherry exclaim: “Good God, we’re not going to a ball, old fellow! What the deuce are you about? Knee-breeches for Cribb’s Parlour!”
“Cribb’s Parlour?” repeated George, shaking hands with Hero. “But I thought we were to go to Almack’s!”
“Oh!” Hero cried, in a little confusion. “I had quite forgot that you said you would go with us! Indeed, I am very sorry, George, and I cannot think how I came to be so stupid!”
“Well, it’s of no account,” said Sherry, pouring a glass of wine for his friend. “Hero don’t care to go to the Assembly, and I have made up a snug little party to meet at Cribb’s Parlour.”
Lord Wrotham looked inquiringly at Hero. The significance of her ball dress was not lost on him; he said: “Is this so indeed? Are you sure you do not care to go?
“No, truly I had as lief stay at home,” she assured him. “I have the headache, you know, and Sherry thinks I should very likely find it quite flat.”
“Oh!” said Wrotham, frowning over it. He glanced from one to the other, and said that he supposed he had best return home to change into raiment more suited to Cribb’s Parlour. This, however, Sherry would not permit him to do, saying that they were late already, and must be on their way. He gave Hero a careless pat on the shoulder recommended her to go early to bed, and swept his friend off with him to Mr Ringwood’s lodging. Here they took up Mr Ringwood into their hackney, and all drove off to the tavern owned by the ex-champion of the Ring. Lord Wrotham’s doubts were still troubling him, and when Mr Ringwood expressed surprise at Sherry’s having selected one of the Assembly nights for this meeting, he said abruptly: “She did not look to me as though she had the headache.”
“Lord, how do you know?” responded Sherry. “She did not wish to go to Almack’s, I tell you! She said so herself. I told her I would go if she had set her heart on it, and she replied at once that she would be glad not to be obliged to go.” He added naïvely: “I must say I was deuced happy to hear it, for it is not in my line at all.”