“Hem!” said Mrs. Booth, with a doubtful little cough, “I should not like to swear to that. What did you say, Lady Westland—haven’t I heard it? Well, I have heard something about strange visitors. It appears there have been several people at Markham lately whom nobody has been asked to meet.”
“That is very significant; I call it very significant. When one’s own friends cease to introduce their friends to us, it is a token that all is not well. Don’t you think so?” said Lady Westland, softly smiling on the doctor’s wife.
Mrs. Rossiter’s sympathies were all with the victims who were being assailed. But the Westlands were very fine people, much more “difficult to know” than the Markhams, and the doctor had not yet got a very distinct footing at the Towers. His young wife thought of her husband’s position, and acquiesced with a sigh.
“But it is not like them,” she said. “The Markhams are so hospitable; they are such nice people; they are always kind.”
“Yes, they ask all sorts of people. It is extraordinary the people one meets there,” Lady Westland said; which made Mrs. Rossiter’s cheek flame, and was a very just recompense to her for her infidelity. And then there was a pause, and the boom of Admiral Trevor’s bass, and the titillation of his sh’s came in like the chorus. He was still holding forth on the subject of the Devastation.
“I don’t wish ’em any harm,” said the old sailor; “I wish-e-may all go down in port like that one t’other day. Wish-em wher-er shure to be looked after. No, blesh us all—no harm!”
Meanwhile the games were going on merrily enough in the paddock. Dolly flew about for three people. She set the little ones afloat in one game, and the big ones in another. The Markhams were still her best allies, Bell throwing herself into the rounds and dances of the infants with characteristic vigour; but Harry and Roland stood apart and whispered to each other, with their hands in their pockets. They would have taken the boys off to play cricket, had that been in the programme.
“No, I will not have it,” Dolly said. “For once in a way they shall be together. It’s bad enough when they grow up, when all the boys troop off for their own pleasure, and never think what the girls are doing. It’s time enough to break up a party and make sects when they’re grown up,” Dolly said. The boys stared, and did not understand her. But it was natural enough that she should be angry. Frank’s cricket match was rankling in his sister’s mind. And Dolly thought that “for once in a way” Paul Markham might have thought of old friends. It was sure to be his fault that even Alice had failed her; Dolly had no idea how it could be his fault, but she was sure of it. Her heart was full of fury as she flew about from one group of children to another, struggling against their tendency to fall into detached parties, and let the amusements flag. “It is far more their parish than it is mine; they will always have it,” she said to herself. When it began to be time for the children to disperse, and the conclusion of her labours approached, she was so far carried away by her feelings as to forget that the Miss Trevor who had helped her with the tea, but had been standing helplessly about since, always in the way, was the shortsighted one, and not the deaf one. “Oh, I wonder why all these people don’t go away?” she cried. “Haven’t they got dinners waiting at home? Why do they stay so long? I am sure I don’t want to have to go and entertain them after the children go away.” And then poor Dolly recollected with horror that Mrs. Booth and Mrs. Rossiter were to stay for a high tea, and that the doctor was to come in to join them. “Oh,” she cried, in her vexation, “I shall not get rid of them to-night.”
“Of whom are you speaking, my dear?” said Miss Trevor, astonished—which brought Dolly to herself; and, fortunately, Miss Trevor could not see that it was her own party, and the rest of the people on the lawn, whom Dolly meant. “I am afraid we must be going very soon,” she added, with regret. “I am sorry not to stay and help you to the end. But dear papa must not be exposed to the night dews.”
Dolly had to marshal the children for a march round, leading them in front of the company on the lawn, and conducting the chorale (as the schoolmistress called it) which they sang before they broke up. This was what the fine people had remained for, and all the parish would have been disappointed had they not stayed. But, notwithstanding, it was hard upon her, tired as she was, to have to stand and receive their compliments, and to be told that it had been “such a pretty scene.”