Year after year, it is true, her husband wet-blanketed her innocent pleasure in seeing the young man’s name on her invitation list.
“That fellow! In your place, my dear Gertrude!” and an expressive raising of the eyebrows said the rest.
“But, Harry,” she would mildly expostulate, “you forget. I knew him when he was—”
“So high—at Whipmore. Oh, yes; I know all about it. Well, well, take your way of it; it doesn’t hurt me if you invite people who don’t want to come.”
“But who always do come, you must allow,” she would reply triumphantly.
“And think themselves mighty condescending for doing so,” Mr Englewood put in.
“You don’t do Despard justice. It’s always the way with men, I suppose.”
“Come now, don’t be down upon me about it,” he would say good-naturedly. “I don’t stop your asking him. It isn’t as if we had daughters. In that case—” but the rest was left to the imagination.
And this particular year Mrs Englewood had smiled to herself at this point of the discussion.
“One can make plans even though one hasn’t daughters,” she reflected. “If Harry would let me ask him to dinner now—but I know there’s no chance of that. And, after all, a good deal may be done at an evening party. I should like to do Despard a good turn, and give him a start before any other. If I could give him a hint! But then there’s my promise to her father,—and Despard is sure to be sensitive on those points. I might spoil it all. No; I shall appeal to his kindheartedness; that is the best. How tender he used to be to poor Lily when she was a tiny child! How he used to mount her up on his shoulders when she couldn’t see the fireworks! I will tell Maisie that story! It is the sort of thing she will appreciate.”