CHAPTER IV.
Geoffery was still at the billiard table, where, with the assistance of Sir William Orm, he was engaged in plucking a new pigeon, no less a personage than the future head of the Salter family.
Mr. John Salter was a vain, vulgar, selfish fool; in natural clumsiness a caricature of John Bull personified, yet so determined to be French and Frenchified, and so proud of his travels to and through Boulogne, that the young men about the rooms, to whom he afforded infinite amusement, called him the Marquis. Sir William Orm, though he had long since cut the other members of the Salter family, sometimes did the young man the honour to win his money; while Geoffery Arden, and several other fashionables, granted him the privilege of a limited portion of their acquaintance on the same liberal terms. When the Misses Salter, however, saw their brother bow to one gentleman, speak to another, and walk with a third, their drooping hopes naturally revived.
"Who is that, John?—Has he much fortune—Is he married?—Couldn't you ask him to dinner some day?—And who is that? I never saw you speak to him before." Such were the questions and comments addressed by the young ladies to their hopeful brother, who never, however, took the trouble of giving them any satisfaction; his usual polite reply being, "If I choose to ask him to dinner, I won't wait for your leave you may depend upon it."
"Well," said Miss Salter to her sister, "if we get plenty of men acquaintance through John, we needn't much care about the ladies after all. It's the men we want you know."
"I know that," said Grace, "but I don't know that we shall get them: however we might have had both the ladies and the gentlemen, only for your improper conduct to Mrs. Dorothea. Isn't this Mr. Arden that John knows, her nephew; and Sir Willoughby Arden, and the other Mr. Arden both her nephews? besides, her knowing all the fine people; why she would have been the very best acquaintance in Cheltenham, if we had only kept her while we had her."
"Well, I wish you'd keep your temper I know, and not be always harping on that old story."
"Temper, indeed! The less you say on that subject the better; but for that matter I mean to take your advice and keep my temper, as it happens to be one of the best going; but I recommend you to part with yours as soon as possible, for you can't exchange it for a worse let me tell you."
Miss Salter, who had just finished washing her hands, snatched up the basin, flung its contents in her sister's face, and effecting her retreat during the first consternation of the enemy, said, as she flounced out of the room, "except I changed it for yours."