“Of course not; I can’t afford it.”
“One thing is certain. If you have any sort of a wedding at Barn Elms, they’ll have to send over and borrow my teaspoons. There hasn’t been a party at Barn Elms for forty years, that they haven’t done it, and I always borrow Jane Temple’s salad-bowl and punch-ladles whenever I have company.”
“I don’t think there will be any wedding feast there,” answered Throckmorton.
“Jacky wants one, I know,” said Mrs. Sherrard, very knowingly. “Jacky loves a racket.”
“Quite naturally—at her age.”
“Oh, yes, of course—her age, as you say. I shall tell Edmund Morford to pay you a pastoral visit, as he always does upon the eve of marriages, to instruct you in the duties of the married state.”
“Then I shall tell Edmund Morford that I know considerably more about my duties in the premises than he does; and I’ll shut him up before he has opened his mouth, as Sweeney would say.”
“If anybody could shut my nephew up, I believe it is you, George Throckmorton. Has Jane Temple suggested that you should join the church yet?”
“She suggests it to me every time I go to Barn Elms, and whenever I go off for a lover’s stroll with Jacqueline, Mrs. Temple tells me I ought to go home and seek salvation.”
“And do you mind her?” asked Mrs. Sherrard, quite gravely; at which Throckmorton gave her a look that was dangerously near a wink.