"I was tired too, that's why . . ." they went out of earshot, and he never caught the end of the sentence.
Eloquent danced no more with Mary, nor did he sit out at all with the indomitable old lady, who, bright-eyed and vigilant, still watched from her post near the band. The end was really near, and he stood against the wall gloomily regarding Mary as she flew about in the arms—very closely in the arms as ruled by the new dancing—of a young barrister. He was staying with the Campions and had, all the previous week, been helping heartily in the Liberal cause. He had come down from London especially to do so, but during Christmas week there was a truce on both sides, and he remained to enjoy himself.
Just then Eloquent hated him. He hated all these people who seemed to find it so easy to be amusing and amused. Yet he stayed till the very last dance watching Phyllida, the milkmaid, with intense disapproval, as, her sun-bonnet hanging round her neck, she tore through the Post Horn Gallop with that detestable barrister. He decided that the manners of the upper classes, if easy and pleasant, were certainly much too free.
It was a fine clear night and he walked to his rooms in Marlehouse. He felt that he had not been a social success. He was much more at home on the platform than in the ball-room, yet he was shrewd enough to see that his lack of adaptability stood in his way politically.
How could he learn these things?
And as if in answer to his question, there suddenly sounded in his ears the fat chuckling voice of the black satin lady:
"Well, well, there's many a pretty Tory lady married a Radical before this, and changed her politics, so don't you lose heart."
CHAPTER X
"THE GANPIES"
"Father's mother," living alone far away in the Forest of Dean, rarely came to Redmarley, and the children never went to visit her. A frail old lady to whom one was never presented save tidily clad and fresh from the hands of nurse for a few moments, with injunctions still ringing in one's ears as to the necessity for a quiet and decorous demeanour.