“Country gone to the dogs—yes,” said Cheriton. “Militia gone to the dooce—quite so. Circus to-morrow, Miss Goose. But Gobo quite educational too.”
Cheriton addressed himself again to slumber, with a peaceful, resigned, yet vastly contented air.
It was five minutes past three before Caroline Crewkerne quitted the table. In spite of her fund of natural shrewdness she could not help feeling—so easy it is for the wisest people to deceive themselves in some things—that she had sat at the feet of a political Gamaliel who played ducks and drakes with the War Office. As for George Betterton, having been endured with a patience that was not always extended to him, without actually giving himself airs, he felt that upon the subject of the Militia he really was no end of a fellow. Cheriton, who had enjoyed an additional thirty-five minutes of undisturbed repose, gave him clearly to understand that he concurred in that opinion.
Back in the drawing-room, Caroline Crewkerne reaffirmed her intention of destroying the half-finished portrait of Miss Perry.
“An unpardonable piece of presumption in the first place,” said she. “And, in the second, the man was positively insolent.”
Cheriton had already looked for the canvas, and with a whimsical little sigh of satisfaction had looked in vain. It would seem that the myrmidons of the Bond Street Galleries had done their work.
“Do be more lenient, my dear Caroline,” said Cheriton, persuasively. “The fellow is young, and his lot is hard. Pray don’t take the bread out of the mouth of a rising genius who has to support his mother. George, my dear fellow, throw the weight of your great influence into the scale. Caroline must be more humane. Rising young man—highly susceptible—wholly captivated by our distracting Miss Goose. Any young fellow with any sort of instinct for nature at her choicest would have done the same.”
Cheriton concluded upon an exclamation from the redoubtable Caroline.
“Why,” she cried, “the picture has been taken away!”
Mr. Marchbanks was summoned.