“And the awkward part of the whole thing was—I don’t mind telling you, Butterfield—that I’d all but taken a fancy to that quiet little daughter of hers, Mrs. Gervase. Well, I was all at sea; the whole thing was too infernally odd. It didn’t seem right, somehow, that I should be thrown over by one woman, make love to her daughter, and be godfather to what might have been my own grandchild, by Gad; and I was in no end of a mess. Don’t you think so?”
I admitted the questionableness of the proceeding.
“Well, I could not get out of the confounded christening—thanks to you, Butterfield,—but as to Mrs. Gervase, that was another matter. I can help that. And she’s a good little woman, too,” he added, “if she were not so infernally modest, by Gad.”
“I think it is, perhaps, better, Coke,” I replied.
IX
THE ETHICS OF ANGLING
I don’t quite know how Mrs. Loring came to pick the Gibsons up. They were not what Carrie termed “quite nice people”; in what respect it was easy to see and difficult to say. Their jewellery was unexceptionable, and barely ostentatious; their manners passed the presentation standard, if falling a little short in the nicer requirements of the tête-à-tête. They did not offend in the matter of “Mr.” and “Esq.,” but sniffed somewhat of “R. S. V. P.” Mrs. Gibson, too, insisted on the forms of chaperonage in a way that was rather more than a passing bow to custom, and which suggested the possibility of her having learned the necessity in a different school from that of Mrs. Loring Chatterton. They had money.
“What do you think of the Gibsons, Rol?” Carrie had said to me; “I don’t like them.”
“I would rather introduce them to my relatives than to my friends,” I replied.
It was pretty evident to me after a short acquaintance with the Gibsons that they were disposed to make much of me. Carrie noticed the same thing, and spoke her mind on the subject with the freedom of engaged youth.
“Mrs. Gibson’s a horrid woman, Rol, and it’s my opinion she wants you to marry Miss Gibson.”