His sister was considerably his junior, and he had been accustomed to order her to do this or that from her babyhood upward, she deeming herself honoured in obeying his caprices. It was a small thing, then, for him to request her to invite Miss Marchant and all her sisters to luncheon next day.
“Do you really mean me to ask all three?” questioned Maud, arching her delicate eyebrows in mild wonder.
“I mean you to ask all five. The little girls are coming to skate on your pond. Give them a good lunch, Maud. Let there be game and kickshaws, such as girls like—and plenty of puddings.”
“All five! How absurd!”
“You said you would be kind to them.”
“But five! Well, I don’t suppose the number need make any difference. What alarms me is the idea of getting too friendly with them—a dropping in to lunch or tea acquaintance, don’t you know. The girls are as good as gold, I have no doubt; but they lead such an impossible life with that impossible father—he almost always away, no chaperon, no nice aunts to look after them—only an old Yorkshire servant and a bit of a girl to open the door. It is all too dreadful.”
“From your point of view, no doubt; but lives as dreadful are being led by a good many families all over England, and out of lives as dreadful has come a good deal of the intellectual power of the country. Come, Maud, don’t prattle, but write your letter—just a friendly little letter to say that I have told you they are coming to skate, and that you must insist upon their stopping to lunch.”
He had found her in her boudoir just before dressing for dinner, and in the very act of sealing the last of a batch of letters. She took up her pen at his bidding, and dashed off an invitation, almost in his own words, with a thick stroke of the J pen under “insist.”
“Will that do?” she asked.
“Admirably,” said Vansittart, with his hand on the bell. “All you have to do is to order a groom to ride to the Homestead with it.”