"Comme il faut. I thought the phrase was untranslatable, but Robin has mastered it," said Lady Lindores.
"You need not laugh at me, mother; and I wish you wouldn't, all of you, call me by that absurd name. I feel like a shepherd boy in a pastoral—the hero, you know,—like Fidelio or Cherubino. Oh, I don't say you are to call me Rintoul—that if you like; but I don't mind Bob——"
"Bob!" the mother and sister cried in one breath. They had all been secretly proud of that pet name of Robin, which he had borne from a child.
"It's not worth talking of," he said carelessly, feeling something of ridicule involved; for though he was not clever, he was sufficiently sympathetic to be conscious of the sentiment in the minds of the others. "The real question is, what you are going to do while you are in town. I have told everybody you were coming; but, mamma, I hope you won't balk everything by going on about theatres and pictures, and so forth. Society is a hundred times more important. It is not only amusing ourselves we have got to think of. It is all very well to laugh," he said, with the most solemn air of offended dignity, "but anybody who knew the world would tell you the same thing."
"My dear boy, I thought I knew a little about the world; but I daresay I am mistaken. I hope, however, you will permit us to amuse ourselves a little now and then. Edith wants to see something and hear something while she is in London. She has not had your advantages——"
"My advantages don't count for very much," said Rintoul, half irritated, half flattered, "and it's just Edith I'm thinking of. There is more to be taken into consideration for her than either amusement or what you call improving her mind. Edith is the entire question. It is to do her justice that is my whole thought."
Edith, on hearing this, laughed out, yet flamed crimson, with mingled ridicule and suspicion. "In what respect am I to have justice?" she said.
"You needn't fire up. All that I want is your good. You ought to be seen: you ought to have your chance like the rest. How are you ever to have that if my mother and you fly about skylarking in all sorts of unlikely places, and keep out of the way of—every opportunity?"
Rintoul, though carried away by his feelings to the point of making this plain statement, was rather alarmed when he had said it, and stopped somewhat breathless. It was alarming to be confronted by his sister's indignant countenance and the angry sparkle in her eyes.
"Do you know what he means, mother?" she cried. "Did you bring me to London to market? That's what he means. Did you come to set up a booth in Vanity Fair? If you did, you must find other wares. Rintoul would make such a good salesman, it is a pity to balk him. But I am not going to be put up to auction," cried the girl, springing to her feet. Then she laughed, though she was so angry. "I am going to get ready for a walk," she said. "I think that delightful bonnet that Miss Macalister in Dunearn made for me will be the very thing for the Park——"