Her father shook his head at her; and Arthur, as he lit a cigarette, remarked that it was all Chinese to him. Elizabeth sat down on the arm of her father's chair.
"You had quite a success to-night, Arthur," she said kindly. "Mr. Christie called you a 'gentlemanly fellow,' and Mrs. Christie said, speaking for herself, she had no objection to the Cockney accent, she rather liked it! And oh! Father, your friend Mr. M'Cann was there. You know who I mean? He talked to me quite a lot. He has been politic-ing down in Ayrshire, and he told me that he rather reminds himself of the Covenanters at their best—Alexander Peden I think was the one he named."
Mr. Seton was carrying Guy Mannering to its place, but he stopped and said, "The wretched fellow!"
The utter wrath and disgust in his tone made his listeners shout with laughter, and Elizabeth said:
"Father, I love you. 'Cos why?"
Mr. Seton, still sore at this defiling of his idols, only grunted in reply.
"Because you are not too much of a saint after all. Oh! don't turn out the lights!"
CHAPTER XV
"There was a lady once, 'tis an old story,
That would not be a queen, that would she not
For all the mud in Egypt."
Henry VIII.
"It is funny to think," Elizabeth said, "that last Friday I was looking forward to your visit with horror."