“What a good idea, mamma! I am sure they would be very pleased to come. Shall I ask them when I see them? It is scarcely worth while to write another note about it.”
Horace said nothing.
“Do just as you like, my dear,” Mrs Littlewood replied. “I leave it in your hands.”
And she could not have done better.
To describe the excitement caused at Fir Cottage by Madeleine’s message, delivered in a kindly, matter-of-fact tone, as if it were a suggestion of but slight importance, would expose the chronicler of these simple annals, deservedly enough, to a strong suspicion of exaggeration. So no attempt to do so will be made. All the more that the expression of this excitement had to be confined to the sisters’ own quarters, and private confabulations. For in their different ways both parents would have resented any appearance of treating the invitation as anything out of the common—Mr Morion, when by any chance such a subject as his now grown-up family’s isolation from ordinary social life came on the tapis, always speaking as if it were entirely a question of “choice” on his part; Lady Emma, though more practical, also taking for granted that only material difficulties as to ways and means were to be thanked for the exceptional state of things. And in this she was probably correct. For her husband’s eccentricities would undoubtedly have never become so marked had he been a rich man, or, even had he all the same deserved Horace’s sobriquet of “the bear,” bears are tolerated when their trappings are of gold—sometimes with really astonishing leniency.
There was from the first no opposition to the invitation of which Madeleine’s brother was the bearer. Lady Emma thanked him—or rather requested him to thank his mother—with calm equanimity.
Yes, Betty and Eira would be pleased to come, she had no doubt. That is to say, if there were no very appalling change in the weather, which would make it scarcely desirable to go out so late.
“You know,” she added, with a smile, “we are terribly rustic in our habits, Mr Littlewood. It is so seldom that anything in the way of evening engagements tempts us to leave our own fireside.”
“I suppose you have any amount of garden parties and that sort of thing in the fine season,” he said; “though you probably find them a great bore?” he added, turning to Betty.
The girl opened her eyes very wide.