“Not to-night, Tabbie,” she said; and Tabitha saw in this refusal only the coquetry of a lovely woman, who wanted to show the great ladies and squire’s wives how poor and common diamonds are by the side of youth and beauty.
“Well, you don’t want any jewels, certainly,” said Tabitha. “You look as if you were going to be married—all but the veil. Those chrysanthemums are ever so much prettier than orange blossoms. There’s the fly. Let me put on your cloak. It’s a beautiful night, and almost as mild as May. Everybody will be at the ball. There’s nothing to keep folks away. Well, I do wish the major was here to go with you. Wouldn’t he be proud?”
The stars were shining when Isola went along the gravel path to the gate where Masters’ fly was waiting, with blazing lamps, which seemed to put those luminous worlds yonder to shame. There was no carriage-drive to the hall door of the Angler’s Nest. The house retained all its ancient simplicity, and ignored the necessities of carriage people. Tabitha wrapped her mistress’s fur-lined cloak close round her, before she stepped into the fly, which was provided with those elaborate steps that seem peculiar to the hired brougham.
“Good night, Tabitha, and thank you for all the pains you’ve taken in dressing me—and for the lovely wreath. I shall come home early. I shan’t wait for Mrs. Baynham’s party.”
“Don’t you hurry,” said Tabitha, heartily. “The Hunt Ball only comes once a year, and you’d better make the most of it. I shan’t mind sitting up; and perhaps I shan’t be half so dull as you think for.”
The flyman shut the door, which nobody but himself could shut—another peculiarity of hired broughams. The fly vanished in the darkness, and Tabitha ran back to the house, where she found Susan waiting at the hall door in her jacket and hat, as near a reproduction of Mrs. Disney’s jacket and hat as local circumstances—or the difference between Bond Street and Lostwithiel—would allow.
“Have you locked and bolted the back doors?” asked Tabitha; “but, lor, I’ll go and look myself; I won’t trust to your giddy young brains. Mr. Tinkerly will be here with the cart directly. I’ve only got to put on my bonnet and dolman, after I’ve taken a look round, and put away Mrs. Disney’s jewel-box.”
Tabitha was no light-minded housekeeper, but she had her hours of frivolity, and she loved pleasure with the innocent freshness of a most transparent soul. Tinkerly, the butcher, had offered to drive the two ladies—Tabitha and Susan—into Lostwithiel in his tax cart, and, furthermore, to place them where they would see something of the ball, or at least of the company arriving and departing, and beyond all this to give them a snack of supper, “Just something to bite at and a glass of beer,” he told Tabitha deprecatingly, lest he should raise hopes beyond his power of realization.
He meant to do the thing as handsomely as circumstances would permit, certainly to the extent of cold boiled beef and pickles, with Guinness or Bass. He was a family man, of irreproachable respectability, and his meat was supposed to be unmatchable for thirty miles round. He grew it himself, upon those picturesque pastures which sloped skyward, dipping towards the blue of the river, rising towards the blue of the sky.