“What are you all saying?” cried Letty, who was making conversation for the vicar at the other end of the table, but who could bear it no longer. “Oh, what are you saying? You are keeping all the fun to yourselves, and I can’t hear a word you say.”
The boys began to sing, drowning her voice—the two schoolboys who had lost their heads altogether. Reggie “started” again, as he said, the chorus of the rest; but as Jack began a different performance altogether to the strain of ‘Froggy he would a wooing go,’ the two tunes clashed for a moment, until attracted by the superior appropriateness of the new ditty Reggie abandoned his first inspiration and chimed in, while Duke rising up cried, “We’ll drink his health again, and christen him for the family, Frogmore!”
That moment, however, an electric shock ran down the table, the song died off into silence. Letitia rose from her place pale with wrath. “How can you permit such a Babel,” she cried. “I am ashamed of you, John. If it goes on another moment I shall have to leave the room: let me hear no more of this nonsense and childish folly here.”
CHAPTER XXXV.
When Agnes went upstairs after this genial but interrupted meal she was met by her sister’s maid, who begged her to go at once to Lady Frogmore. “My lady’s very restless,” said the attendant, who was something more than a maid, the same who had brought her home after her recovery. “You don’t think there’s anything wrong?” said Agnes, breathless, for notwithstanding the tranquillity of so many years, any trifle was enough to arouse her anxieties. “Oh, I hope not,” said the maid. This was enough, it need not be said, to send Miss Hill trembling to her sister’s side. Mary was lying very quietly in bed, with some boxes on the table beside her, and a miniature of her husband, which she always carried about with her, in her hands. “You wanted me, Mary?” “No,” said Lady Frogmore, gently; then, after a pause—“Yes: I hope you will not be disappointed, dear Agnes, I think I must go home.”
“Home! but we came for Duke’s party.”
“I know; but I do not think I can remain any longer. Perhaps if you were to stay——”
“I will not stay if you go, Mary.”
“I thought Letitia would not mind so much if one of us was here. I can’t stay, I can’t,” said Mary, with a little sudden burst of tears. “Don’t ask me. My head goes round and round——”
“No, indeed,” said her sister; “no one shall ask you. I feared it might be too much; and then the tent was so hot this afternoon.”