“I wish it had been a ball,” said the overwhelming host. “We ought to have kept it up half through the night, and enjoyed another supper, eh? at midnight, and a little more of that Clicquot. I hope there’s enough for half-a-dozen balls. Why hadn’t you the sense to keep the young people for the evening, Fred? Perhaps you thought the provisions wouldn’t last, or that I would object to pay the band for a few hours longer. My children make me look stingy, Mrs. Ogilvie. They have got a number of small economical ways.”
“And that’s an excellent thing,” said the lady, “for perhaps they may not have husbands that will be so liberal as their father—or so well able to afford it—and then what would they do?”
“I hope to put them beyond the risk of all that,” said the man of money, jingling his coins. He did not offer to put Mrs. Ogilvie into the carriage as she had supposed, but looked on with his hands in his pockets, and saw her get in. The Ogilvies were almost the last to leave, and the last object that impressed itself upon them as they turned round the corner of the house was Mr. Dirom’s white waistcoat, which looked half as big as Allonby itself. When every one had disappeared, he took Fred, who was not very willing, by the arm, and led him along the river bank.
“Is that the family,” he said, “my fine fellow, that they tell me you want to marry into, Fred?”
“I have never thought of the family. Since you bring it in so suddenly—though I was scarcely prepared to speak on the subject—yes: that’s the young lady whom in all the world, sir, I should choose for my wife.”
“Much you know about the world,” said Mr. Dirom. “I can’t imagine what you are thinking of; a bit of a bread-and-butter girl, red and white, not a fortune, no style about her, or anything out of the common. Why, at your age, without a tithe of your advantages, I shouldn’t have looked at her, Mr. Fred.”
If there was in Fred’s mind the involuntary instinctive flash of a comparison between his good homely mother and pretty Effie, may it be forgiven him! He could do nothing more than mutter a half sulky word upon difference of taste.
“That’s true,” said his father; “one man’s meat is another man’s poison. My Lady Alicia’s not much to look at, but she is Lady Alicia; that’s always a point in her favour. But this little girl has nothing to show. Bread and butter, that’s all that can be said.”
To this Fred, with gathering curves upon his forehead, made no reply at all.
“And her people are barely presentable,” said the father. “I say this with no personal feeling, only for your good; very Scotch, but nothing else about them to remember them by. A sodden stagnant old Scotch squire, and a flippant middle-class mother, and I suppose a few pounds of her own that will make her think herself somebody. My dear fellow, there you have everything that is most objectionable. A milkmaid would not be half so bad, for she would ask no questions and understand that she got everything from you——”