"Let the white ones become the fashionable color and the red will turn fast enough," retorted the other angrily.
"Possibly, but that fashion has not yet been set."
"Come, come, I will have no sparring," said Lady Throckmorton imperatively. "Captain Lovelace, do you not see that Miss Bunnell has her tea all ready to dispense? What are you thinking of? Give them plenty of sugar, my good Bunnell, and sweeten their tempers."
On this hint the gentlemen bestirred themselves, and handed us little cups of tea with sponge cakes and other things of that kind. I had not yet learned to like tea, which I had never seen till I came to England, and Lady Throckmorton seeing that I did not drink mine, bade Mr. Cheriton exchange it for a cup of chocolate. My lady herself waited upon her husband, carrying him his chocolate and other refreshments, and spending some minutes in arranging them to his liking.
"How devoted Lady Throckmorton is to her husband! Is it not a pretty exhibition?" said Captain Lovelace in my ear, as he stood just behind me. "She is always so—at least when there is any one to see her. He has all his personal property in his own power, and she has no settlements to speak of; but of course that has nothing to do with the matter."
I knew nothing of settlements or personal property at that time, but I understood the implied detraction, and felt indignant at it. I had begun to feel very uncomfortable by that time, as if I had of my own accord walked into a net out of which I did not see my way. Presently Lady Throckmorton came back to her seat, and began asking the news of the day.
"They say the Methodists are coming hither again," said Captain Lovelace. "If so, we shall have some sport. You ought to have seen how we served them at Leeds when I was there. There was a bull-baiting in the town, and we drove the bull right in among them, as they stood with open mouths and ears, around their prophet. There was a fine scattering at first, I promise you. But if you will believe it, when the beast got into the crowd, he stood stock still by the side of Mr. Wesley himself, as quiet as he had been a tame dog." *
* This incident, or one nearly similar, happened at Pensford, March, 1742.
I saw Mrs. Bunnell smile at this, as with a kind of triumph, at which I wondered, for it seemed to me a mean and dastardly action.
"I have taken a shorter way than that," said Lord Bulmer. "I took up a local preacher, and another fellow of that sort who had the impudence to come praying and exhorting among my tenants, and sent them for soldiers on the spot. I told them I would soon stop their prayers, and one of them, if you will believe me, had the impudence to answer me: 'You cannot do that, my lord, unless you can stop the path to heaven.' Why, one of those rascals had the impudence to tell Dr. Borlase himself that he knew his sins were forgiven."