“So long as that is neither you nor me,” said Sophy, laughing, “I don’t mind; I should rather like to spite Everard’s wife, if she’s somebody else. Why should men ever marry? I am sure they are a great deal better as they are.”
“Speaking of marrying,” said Kate seriously, “far the best thing for you to do, if it is true about Herbert, is to marry him, Sophy. You are the one that is the most suitable in age. He is just a simple innocent, and knows nothing of the world, so you could easily have him, if you liked to take the trouble; and then Whiteladies would be secured, one way or another, and papa pleased.”
“But me having it would not be like him having it,” said Sophy. “Would he be pleased? You said not just now.”
“It would be the best that could be done,” said Kate; and then she began to recount to her sister certain things that Dropmore had said, and to ask whether Sophy thought they meant anything? which Sophy, wise in her sister’s concerns, however foolish in her own, did not think they did, though she herself had certain words laid up from “Alf,” in which she had more faith, but which Kate scouted. “They are only amusing themselves,” said the elder sister. “If Herbert does get better, marry him, Sophy, with my blessing, and be content.”
“And you could have Everard, and we should neither of us change our names, but make one charming family party—”
“Oh, bosh! I hate your family parties; besides, Everard would have nothing in that case,” said Kate, ringing the bell for the maid, before whom they did not exactly continue their discussion, but launched forth about Dropmore and Alf.
“There’s been some one over here from the barracks this morning,” said Sarah, “with a note for master. I think it was the Markis’s own man, miss.”
“Whatever could it be?” cried both the sisters together, for they were very slipshod in their language, as the reader will perceive.
“And Miss Kate did go all of a tremble, and her cheeks like strawberries,” Sarah reported in the servants’ hall, where, indeed, the Markis’s man had already learned that nothing but a wedding could excuse such goings on.
“We ain’t such fools as we look,” that functionary had answered with a wink, witty as his master himself.