"Oh, Augustus," came the voice of Mrs. Windpeg, "I feel so faint with happiness!"
"Loose your arms a moment, my popsy. I'll fetch you a drop of Damtidam!" answered the voice of Jones.
The Principal Boy.
I.
To sit out a play is a bore; to sit out a dance demands less patience. Even when you do it merely to prevent your partner dancing with you, it is the less disagreeable alternative. But it sometimes makes you giddier than galoping. Frank Redhill lost his head—a well-built head—completely through indulging in it; and without the head to look after it, the heart soon goes. He held Lucy's little hand in his hot clasp. She wished he would get himself gloves large enough not to split at the thumbs, and felt quite affectionate towards the dear, untidy boy. As a woman almost out of her teens, she could permit herself a motherly feeling for a lad who had but just attained his majority. The little thing looked very sweet in a demure dress of nun's veiling, which Frank would have described as "white robes." For he was only an undergraduate. Some undergraduates are past masters in the science and art of woman; but Frank was not in that set. Nor did he herd with the athletic, who drift mainly into the unpaid magistracy, nor with the worldly, who usually go in for the church. He was a reading man. Only he did not stick to the curriculum, but fed himself on the conceits of the poets, and thirsted to redeem mankind. So he got a second-class. But this is anticipating. Perhaps Lucy had been anticipating, too. At any rate she went through the scene as admirably as if she had rehearsed for it. And yet it was presumably the first time she had been asked to say: "I love you"—that wonderful little phrase, so easy to say and so hard to believe. Still, Lucy said and Frank believed it.
Not that Lucy did not share his belief. It must be for love that she was conceding Frank her hand—since her mother objected to the match. As the nephew of a peer, Frank could give her rather better society than she now enjoyed, even if he could not give her that of the peer, who had an hereditary feud with him. Of course she could not marry him yet, he was quite too poor for that, but he was a young man of considerable talents—which are after all gold pieces. When fame and fortune came to him, Lucy would come and join the party. En attendant, their souls would be wed. They kissed each other passionately, sealing the contract of souls with the red sealing-wax of burning lips. To them in Paradise entered the Guardian Angel with flaming countenance, and drove them into the outer darkness of the brilliant ball-room.
"My dear," said the Guardian Angel, who was Lucy Grayling's mother, "there is going to be an interval, and Mrs. Bayswater is so anxious for you to give that sweet recitation from Racine."
So Lucy declaimed one of Athalie's terrible speeches in a way that enthralled those who understood it, and made those who didn't, enthusiastic.
The applause did not seem to gratify the Guardian Angel as much as usual. Lucy wondered how much she had seen, and, disliking useless domestic discussion, extorted a promise of secrecy from her lover before they parted. He did not care about keeping anything from his father—especially something of which his approval was dubious. Still, all's fair and honourable in love—or love makes it seem so.