“If you will allow me to manage things my own way, and will not appear in the very least to interfere; why—I—I will do my best.”
“Thank you, my boy. I knew you would,” said the Major. “God bless you, my son; and God grant you success.”
Michael did not think it necessary to reply to these remarks, which were really uttered as a matter of course; but he went upstairs early to his bedroom, and took great care in selecting the white tie he would wear with his dinner suit that evening. Instead of the morsel of mistletoe, which was considered the correct thing among the young ladies at Langdale for the gentlemen to wear at the Arbuthnots’ dinner parties, he went out and purchased a rose. He paid a shilling for a rose with a bud attached, and put it with care into his button-hole. When he had finished dressing, he surveyed himself in the glass with great satisfaction. He was a good-looking fellow, and might, he thought, attract the admiration and affection of any girl. He tried hard to remember what colour Florence’s eyes were; but hers was an evasive face, which baffled inquiry. It was full of subtle changes. The eyes looked brown one moment, green the next; and then again a careful observer would swear that they were grey. But they had a story in them at all times. So Michael thought to himself. He thought that to compare them to the stars of heaven would be a happy metaphor, and that he might use it with effect that evening. He hoped the night would be fine, so that they could go out between the dances. They always danced at Colonel Arbuthnot’s on Christmas night. When dinner was cleared away, the tables were pushed to one side, and the polished floor left ready for the tread of the dancers.
Then was Susie’s really proud moment. She would sit at the old piano—never in perfect tune—and play one old-fashioned waltz and old-fashioned polka after another. She played a set of the Lancers too when she was pressed to do so; but was often heard to say she considered them too rompy. Notwithstanding, she was never tired of rattling out her old tunes on the old piano; and Reid thought of the dancing and of the happy minute when he would get Florence to himself under the stars and compare her bright eyes to those luminaries.
When he had finished dressing, he went downstairs and spoke to his father.
“You are going in a cab, I suppose, as usual?”
“Well, yes; there’s a good deal of snow on the ground, and it is some little distance to the Arbuthnots’, so I told Hoggs to call. Dinner is at seven. The cab will be here at ten minutes to the hour.”
“You don’t greatly mind if I walk on in advance?”
“Of course not, my boy, if you prefer it. But be sure you put on good stout walking shoes, and change them for your pumps when you get in.”
“All right, Dad,” said this soldier of his Majesty’s —th Foot; and, slipping on an overcoat, he stepped out into the frosty night.