"A badly cooked pheasant," Thérèse corrected her.
"You are both wicked little slanderers," Lady Beltham protested gently, "and don't know the blessing a good appetite is. You do, Susannah, don't you?"
Susannah, a pretty Irish girl, looked up from a letter she was reading, and blushed.
"Oh, Lady Beltham, I've been ever so much less hungry since Harry's ship sailed."
"I don't quite see the connection," Lady Beltham answered. "Love is good nourishment for the soul, but not for the body. However, a good appetite is nothing to be ashamed of, and you ought to keep your roses for your future husband, and qualify in every way to be an excellent mother of a family."
"With lots and lots of children," Lisbeth went on wickedly: "seven or eight daughters at the very least, all of whom will marry nice young clergymen when their time comes and——"
She stopped speaking and the light chatter died away as a footman entered and announced the Reverend William Hope, who followed him immediately into the room, an elderly man with a full, clean-shaven face and a comfortable portliness of figure.
Lady Beltham offered him a cordial hand.
"I am delighted you are back," she said. "Will you have a cup of tea with us?"
The parson made a general bow to the girls gathered about the table.