Invitations to ceremonious dinners followed in due course, and were reluctantly accepted, since it would have seemed ungracious to refuse them: and by-and-by Mrs. Trimmer, the housekeeper, suggested that the Manor House ought to give a series of dinners, such as she remembered when she was a giddy-pated young kitchen-maid in the service of Jasper Treverton’s father and mother.
‘They used to send out invitations for two or three dinner parties when the pheasant shooting began, and get it over,’ said Mrs. Trimmer, ‘for they were homely people, and didn’t care much for company. The old gentleman was wrapped up in his books, and the old lady was wrapped up in her garden; but when they gave a dinner there was no mistake about it.’
Laura submitted to inexorable custom.
‘We have eaten people’s dinners, and I suppose we must invite them here,’ she said, with an air of serio-comic vexation, ‘or they will consider us dishonest. Shall I make a list of the people to be asked, Jack, and shall we give Trimmer carte blanche about the dinner?’
‘I suppose that will be best,’ assented John, whose Christian name affection had corrupted to Jack. ‘Trimmer is a capital cook of the substantial English school. Her menu may be wanting in originality, but it will be safe.’
‘Well, I am glad you are awaking to the necessity of living like civilized Christians, instead of spooning all day in the seclusion of a house, compared with which Robinson Crusoe’s island must have been a vortex of dissipation,’ exclaimed Celia Clare, who was present at this discussion. ‘I am glad that at last, if it were only for my sake, you are going to conform to the laws of society. How am I to get a husband, I should like to know, unless I meet people here? There is no other house worth visiting in the neighbourhood.’
‘We’ll take your necessities into consideration, my dear girl,’ answered John, gaily, ‘and if you can suggest any eligible bachelors, we’ll ask them to dinner.’
‘That’s exactly what I cannot do,’ said Celia, with a despairing shrug. ‘There are no eligible bachelors indigenous to the soil. The only plan would be to put a nota bene to your cards of invitation, “If you have any nice young men about you, pray bring them.”’
‘Laura might give a dance at Christmas, and then we might beat up for young men,’ answered John. ‘I’m afraid as long as we confine ourselves to dinner parties, we shall not be able to do much for you, my poor Celia.’
‘But are you not going to have people to stay in the house when the pheasant shooting begins?’ inquired Celia, with uplifted eyebrows. ‘Are not your old friends going to rally round you? I thought they always did when a man came into a fortune.’