“I don’t mind—if you are going to it,” said the old lawyer: “but I can’t see what young men want at concerts?”
Tom caught Miss Emma’s eye and her blushes, and gave her a glance that told her he should be sure to come.
But, before the lapse of twenty-four hours, in spite of his non-intention, Mr. Paul had taken on Tom Chandler and, looking back in later years, it might be seen that it had been on the cards of destiny that Tom should be taken.
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.”
Lawyer Paul was still in his dining-room that evening in his handsome house just out of Islip, and before any of his expected guests had come, when Tom arrived to say he could not make one, and was shown into the drawing-room. Feasting his eyes with Miss Emma’s charming dress, and shaking her hand longer than was at all polite, Tom told her why he could not go.
“My mother took me to task severely, Emma. She asked me what I could be thinking of to wish to go to a public concert when my uncle was only buried the day before yesterday. The truth is, I never thought of that.”
“I am so sorry,” whispered Emma. “But I am worse than you are. It was I who first asked whether you meant to go. And it is to be the nicest concert imaginable!”
“I don’t care for the concert,” avowed Tom. “I—I should like to have gone to it, though.”
“At least you—you will stay and take some tea,” suggested Emma.
“If I may.”