“I thought you liked the Cleaves so much,” he said.
“Yes, I do. I like young Mrs Cleave very much. It isn’t that. It is only that I had set my heart on going from Romary, and asking nice people to go with us.”
“So we might have done, but for this visit to Paris,” said Mr Cheviott. “But it can’t be helped. There will be more balls in the neighbourhood before the winter is over.”
“Arthur,” said Alys, suddenly, but in a low voice, when, later in the evening, she had got Captain Beverley to herself in a corner of the drawing-room—“Arthur, do you know what I had set my heart on for the Brocklehurst ball.”
“What sort of dress, do you mean?” said her cousin. “No, I certainly do not know, and I am perfectly sure I couldn’t possibly guess. So you had better tell me.”
“I don’t mean a dress,” said Alys, contemptuously, “I meant a plan.”
Captain Beverley did not at once answer.
“A plan, I say, Arthur, don’t you hear?” repeated Alys, impatiently.
“I beg your pardon,” exclaimed Arthur, rallying his attention. “A plan to show me, did you say? For my new farm-house? It is very good of you to trouble about it.”
“Oh! Arthur, how provoking you are! What is the matter with you?” exclaimed Alys. “Of course it wasn’t that sort of plan I was talking of. It was a plan of mine—one that I had made in my head, don’t you understand? It was about the Brocklehurst ball. I wanted to coax Laurence into letting me call on the Westerns, Arthur, the Westerns at Hathercourt, you know, and then I would have got him to let me ask them—the girls, of course, I mean—to come to stay at Romary for two or three days, and go to the ball with us. Wouldn’t it have been nice, Arthur? It would have been a treat for them, as the children say. They are such pretty, nice girls, and I am sure they don’t have many ‘treats’.”