‘You are the very man,’ said Leo, ‘whom I wished to see. Come and dine with me to-night at the Hall, will you, Plowden? It will be an act of charity, for I shall be quite alone.’
‘At the Hall!’ said Jim, startled.
‘It is far to go for a charitable object,’ said Leo, with a laugh.
‘Oh, I didn’t mean that!’ cried Jim, confused. And thus once more the ‘Blue Boar’ (which was, indeed, quite an innocent beast, and rather relieved than otherwise that the Rector’s son entered its jaws no more) was cheated of its prey.
But whether Jim, unconscious Jim, may be the means of bringing together Leo Swinford and the good Emmy, who was so like, and yet so unlike, the other Emily Plowden of the past, is a fact which lies still undiscovered in the womb of time—where also it remains as yet unknown whether the dispositions of Mab in his favour (conditionally) will ever be understood by him or carried out. Should they be, the reader may be sure that the strenuous opposition of Lady William will be a difficulty hard to surmount in the experiences of this young pair.
Mab and her mother, however, spent more than one day in town during that summer—it being decided that the young lady’s introduction to society was not to take place till she was eighteen—under the escort of Lord Will: and they went to luncheon with the family, and were most benignly received by the Marchioness, who regretted warmly that she had never up to this time made the acquaintance of her sister-in-law.
‘But you see how my time is taken up,’ she said, with a significant glance at the four tall girls (all taking after her ladyship’s family, and not a Pakenham among them, thank Heaven! she was apt to say) who assembled at luncheon, the two who were still in the schoolroom looking quite as mature as the two who were ‘out.’ Mab was the only one who was like Lord Portcullis, ridiculously like, all the family agreed. And one day they went to the Row together, where Lord Will and his sister, who accompanied the party, pointed out everybody who was anybody to Mab. They pointed out to her many people whose names she knew, and whom she looked upon with admiration and interest, and a great many who were to her quite unknown.
‘I never heard of them before,’ said little Mab, ready to yawn after a list of such names. ‘Who are they? What have they done?’
‘Oh, you little simpleton,’ said Lady Betty, ‘they are the very smartest people in town,’ for that odious adjective had just come into use at the time.
As for Lord Will, he was at that moment engaged in communicating a piece of modern history to the charming aunt, whom that young man much preferred to her daughter.