"What, Lionel Beauchamp!" exclaimed Sylla: "do you mean to say Lionel
Beauchamp is coming to the Grange?"
"So Blanche told me this afternoon; why, do you know him?"
"Know him? yes, pretty much in the same way you know Jim Bloxam. By the way, do you call him 'Jim'?" (The two girls nodded assent.) "Ah, I like to ask about these things: proprieties differ in different counties; it strikes me Fernshire is of the rigidly decorous order."
"Well," laughed Miss Chipchase, "it is past twelve; and if Todborough Rectory is to keep its character, we must be off to bed and listen no more to your Suffolk gabbling. It's well mamma is laid up with a cold, or we should have been broomed off long ago."
"Very well, Laura; in revenge for that last aspersion I will tell you nothing whatever more about Lionel Beauchamp. Only promise me one thing: don't let out that he and I have known each other from childhood, please don't. I do so want to see Lady Mary's face when she hears me call him Lionel. I suspect she is inclined to think me a very fast young woman. She shall!" and with this ominous menace Miss Sylla danced upstairs to bed. Lady Mary, when she found that she must yield in the matter of the ball, was far too clever a diplomatist not to give a most gracious assent. She laughed, and vowed that she really thought a set of Londoners like they all were would have looked forward to quiet during the Easter holidays; but as they preferred racket, well, racket be it to their hearts' content. Her duty towards her guests as hostess was simply to promote the happiness of the greater number. They would all go to Commonstone, and it only remained now to settle the matter of transport. The break would hold eight comfortably. If Mr. and Mrs. Evesham with their daughters, Mr. and Mrs. Sartoris, Mr. Cottrell, and the Squire would go in that, then she, Blanche, and either Captain Braybrooke or Mr. Beauchamp could go in the carriage, and Jim could drive one gentleman over in the dog-cart.
Jim Bloxam knew that he had carried his point sorely against his mother's inclination; but he had got his cue now, and resolved to second all her arrangements loyally.
"All right, mother," he said, "that will do very well, you take
Beauchamp in the carriage, and Braybrooke can come in the cart with me."
Although the party generally cared little about the manner of their going to the ball, there was one exception, and this was Mr. Pansey Cottrell. That gentleman was extremely fond of his own ease and comfort, and when a hostess presumed to take him out to a country ball, he did consider that she was at least bound to find him a front seat in a most comfortable carriage. "Breaks are all very well," quoth Mr. Cottrell, "for tough country gentlemen; but I don't expect to be carted about as if I was a stag on Easter Monday." In short, although Pansey Cottrell could hardly have been said to be seriously annoyed, yet he held Lady Mary guilty of a want of consideration for a man of his status in the fashionable world. To the mischief inherent in his disposition, and which so often led him to thwart the schemes of those about him, was now added a mild feeling of resentment, not amounting to anger, but a feeling that he owed it to himself to mete out some slight punishment to his hostess. "Yes," he muttered, as he arranged his white tie in the glass just before dinner, "I think, Lady Mary, the chances are that I shall contrive to make you a little uncomfortable this evening. That Sylla Chipchase is as full of devilry as she can be, and with a very pretty taste for privateering besides. If I give her a hint of your designs, I should think there is nothing she would like better than to do a little bit of cutting-out business, and temporarily capture Lionel Beauchamp under the very guns of the fair Blanche; however, I shall be guided by events. But there is one thing, my lady, you may be sure—I shall not forget I was relegated to a break."
When the ringers are not in accord the result is wont to be
"Sweet bells jangled, out of tune."