Colonel Piercey was in no very genial frame of mind. He was angry to see Mrs. Osborne superseded, and angry with her that she did not step forward and take the direction of everything. And when this fool, this Softy, as the country people called him, addressed himself with elbow and voice, his disgust was almost beyond bounds. It was not decorous of the next-of-kin: he turned away from the grinning idiot with a sharp exclamation, forgetting altogether that he was, more or less, the master of the house.
“Oh, hush, Gervase,” said Mrs. Osborne. “Don’t laugh: you will shock all the people. She is—— very serviceable. She shows—— great sense—— Gervase, why is she here?”
He was on the point of laughter again, but was frightened this time by Margaret. “Why, here’s just where she ought to be,” he said, with a suppressed chuckle. “I told you, but you didn’t understand. I almost told—— mother.”
Here the half-witted young man paused a little with a sudden air of trouble. “Mother; what’s all this about mother?” he said.
“Oh, Gervase! she wanted you so!”
“Well,” he cried, “but how could I come when I didn’t know? Ask her. We never heard a word. I remember now. We only came back last night. I thought after all we might find her all right when we came back. Is it—is it true, Meg?”
He spoke with a sort of timidity behind Patty’s back, still pulling his cousin’s dress, the grin disappearing from his face, but his hat still on the back of his head, and his fatuous eyes wandering. His attention was only half arrested even by a question of such importance. It moved the surface of his consciousness, and no more; his eye, even while he was speaking, was caught by the unruly action of the horses in one of the carriages far down the avenue, which put a movement of interest into his dull face.
“I cannot speak to you about it all here. Come in, and I will tell you everything,” Margaret said.
He made a step after her, and then looked back; but Patty was still busily engaged with Sir Giles, and her husband escaped, putting his cousin’s tall figure between himself and her.
“I say, are all this lot of people coming here? What are they coming here for? Have I got to talk to all these people, Meg?”