“I wonder,” Sên replied, “if—after we are older friends, Lady Snow would allow me to ride with you some day, Miss Gilbert? And I very much wonder, if you’d let me? Miss Julia Townsend says she’d ride with me, if she were younger, and I have driven her several times in my dog-cart, without a groom.”
“I’ve no doubt Miss Julia would ride with you in a balloon—if you wished it,” Miss Gilbert said severely.
“Happy thought!” Sên retorted. “Shall I ask her?”
“Let me be there when you ask her,” Emma Snow giggled.
“Let me be there when you go up,” was Sir Charles’ request. “She’d go all right, I’ve no doubt of that. She’s a splendid sport.”
“She’s a delightful, wonderful woman,” Sên King-lo added. “Will you let me take you, Miss Gilbert—if Lady Snow will allow me?”
“In a balloon?”
“Not for worlds,” Sên declined; “on a horse. I have one that would carry a lady perfectly, Lady Snow.”
“The chaperon’s as dead as Queen Anne,” the young matron said. “And Miss Gilbert is one of the new dispensations.” She spoke lightly, cordially even—but her husband shot her a puzzled look. He knew—he knew every tone and tint of her voice so well—that for some odd reason Emma was not pleased.
“I am not!” Ivy asserted coldly. “I despise them.”