“It’s taken him a long time to recognise his own privilege, hasn’t it, Patricia?” said Cæsar, gently putting his hand on hers. “I was getting impatient with him. It was time he grew up.”
“You aren’t disappointed then?” she asked with a little flush of confusion. “Mrs. Sartin will be. She always expects him to marry a duchess at least. She is so insufferably proud of him.”
“She does not know him so well as we do, that’s why.”
“I’ll not stay here to be discussed,” remarked Christopher decidedly, “you can pull my character to pieces when I’m away. When did you last see Mrs. Sartin, Patricia?”
“Last Thursday. She comes to tea every week with Maria.”
Maria was Mrs. Sartin’s second daughter, midway between Sam and Jim, and was just installed as second lady’s-maid to Mrs. Wyatt.
“Is Sam more reconciled to her going out?”
“Not a bit. You know he wanted to send her to a Young Ladies’ Academy in Battersea. I know he’d have done it but for Martha, who has more sense in her fingers than he has in his whole head.”
“Hadn’t Maria anything to say in the matter?” This from Cæsar.
“No one has much to say when Sam and his mother dispute,” said Christopher, shaking his head. “Sam would be a tyrant, Cæsar, if he could. He always wants to push people on in his own way.”