“Did she, though?” said Ferdy, interested. “Dare say she didn’t wait for the steps to be let down. I had an aunt — well, you remember her, Sherry! Old Aunt Charlotte, the one who — ”
“For God’s sake, Ferdy, will you go and put your head under the pump?” cried the exasperated Viscount. “There wasn’t any abigail!”
“But you said — ”
“He made it up out of his head,” explained Mr Ringwood kindly. “Ought to have been an abigail.”
“Yes, by Jove, and that’s another thing I shall have to arrange!” exclaimed Sherry. “’Pon my soul, there’s no end to it! Where the deuce does one find abigails, Gil?”
“She’ll find one,” Mr Ringwood said. “Bridegroom don’t have to engage the abigails. Butler and footmen, yes. Not abigails.”
His lordship shook his head. “Won’t do at all. She wouldn’t know how to go about it. I tell you, she’s the veriest chit out of the schoolroom. Not up to snuff at all.”
Mr Ringwood eyed him uneasily. “Dear old boy, you haven’t run off with a schoolgirl, have you?”
A rueful grin stole into the Viscount’s eyes. “Well, she ain’t quite seventeen yet,” he admitted.
“Sherry, there’ll be the devil of a dust kicked up!”