Phœbe laughed. It did not occur to the accomplished scion of the house of Copperhead, nor to the two girls, who were not experienced enough to think of such things, what was the meaning expressed in Phœbe's laugh, which was not cheerful. Mr. May himself had the advantage of more discrimination.
“I hope you will find that, Dissenter or not, I know what is my duty to my friends,” he said. “What my guests may possess, or the exact nature of their opinions on all points, are not subjects to be discussed by me.”
“Oh, there is nothing to find fault with in you,” said Phœbe, with less than her usual universal courtesy; “you are always kind, Mr. May;” and then she laughed again. “Some people are very clever in finding out the vulnerable places,” she said.
“She is changed,” said Clarence, when she was gone. “She is not the jolly girl she used to be. She was always a very jolly girl; ready to help a fellow out of a scrape, you know. But Northcote's a fearfully clever fellow. You should just hear him talk. He and May will go at it hammer and tongs, as sure as fate.”
CHAPTER XXIX.
URSULA'S ENTRÉES.
It would be difficult to describe the anxiety with which that first “late dinner” was regarded by Ursula. Janey, too, had thrown herself into it heart and soul, until she received the crushing intimation from her father, that her company was not expected at this stately meal; a discovery which altogether extinguished poor Janey, accustomed to be always in the front whatever occurred, and to whom suggestions of things that could not be done by a girl who was not “out,” had never presented themselves. She retired to her own room dissolved in tears when this fearful mandate went forth, and for the rest of the morning was good for nothing, her eyes being converted into a sort of red pulp, her rough hair doubly dishevelled, her whole being run into tears. She was of no more use now to go errands between the kitchen and the drawing-room, or to read the cookery-book out loud, which was a process upon which Ursula depended very much, to fix in her mind the exact ingredients and painful method of preparation of the entrées at which she was toiling. Betsy, the former maid-of-all-work, now promoted under the title of cook, could be trusted to roast the saddle of mutton, which, on consideration that it was “a party,” had been thought preferable to a leg, and she could boil the fish, after a sort, and make good honest family soup, and the rice-pudding or apple-tart, which was the nearest approach to luxury indulged in at the Parsonage; but as for entrées, Betsy did not know what they were. She had heard of made dishes indeed, and respectfully afar off had seen them when she was kitchen-maid at Lady Weston's—the golden age of her youthful inexperience. But this was so long ago, that her recollections were rather confusing than useful to Ursula, when she went downstairs to make her first heroic effort.
“La, Miss, that ain't how cook used to do 'em at Lady Weston's,” Betsy said, looking on with unbelieving eyes. She was sure of this negative, but she was not sure of anything else, and utterly failed to give any active assistance, after driving the girl desperate with her criticisms. Altogether it was a confused and unpleasant day. When Reginald came in in the morning, his sister had no time to speak to him, so anxious was she and pre-occupied, and the drawing-room was being turned upside down, to make it look more modern, more elegant, more like the Dorsets' drawing-room, which was the only one Ursula knew. The comfortable round table in the middle, round which the family had grouped themselves for so long, had been pushed aside into a corner, leaving one fresh patch of carpet, quite inappropriate, and unconnected with anything else; and instead of the work and the school-books which so often intruded there, all that was gaudy and uninteresting in the May library had been produced to decorate the table; and even a case of wax flowers, a production of thirty years since, which had been respectfully transferred to a china closet by Ursula's better taste, but which in the dearth of ornament she had brought back again. Reginald carried off the wax flowers and replaced the table with his own hands, while Ursula scorched her cheeks over the entrées downstairs.