"Talk about business to you! when I've only a single day, and not half time enough, you little duck, to tell you what a darling you are, and how I count every hour till I can have you all to myself. Ah, Nell, Nell, if that day were only here——"
And then Phil turned to those subjects and those methods which cast so much confusion into the mind of Mrs. Dennistoun, when practised under her sedate and middle-aged eyes. But Elinor, as has been said, did not take exactly the same view.
Presently they went to luncheon, and Phil secured himself a place at table commanding the road. "I never knew before how jolly it was," he said, "though everything is jolly here. And that peep of the road must give you warning when any invasion is coming."
"It is too far off for that," said Mrs. Dennistoun.
"Oh, no, not for sharp eyes. Nell there told me who several people were—those white horses—the people at—where did you say, Nell?"
"Reddown, mamma—the Philistines, as you call them, that are always dashing about the country—nouveaux riches, with the finest horses in the county."
"I like the nouveaux riches for that," said Phil (he did not go wrong in his French, which was a great consolation to Elinor), "they like to have the best of everything. Your poor swell has to take what he can get, but the parvenu's the man in these days; and then there was a dog-cart, which she pronounced to be from the station, but which turned out to be the butcher, or the baker, or the candle-stick maker——"
"It is really too far off to make sure of anything, except white horses."
"Ah, there's no mistaking them. I see something sweeping along, but that's a country wagon, I suppose. It gives me a great deal of diversion to see the people on the road—which perhaps you will think a vulgar amusement."
"Not at all," said Mrs. Dennistoun, politely, but she thought within herself how empty the brain must be which sought diversion from the distant carriages passing two miles off: to be sure across the combe, as the crow flies, it was not a quarter part so far as that.