“I was amused the last time you were here,” Sir Roland answered smiling, “to find how thoroughly you and my mother seemed to understand each other. I am sure that if she is well enough to see anybody, she will see you. Meanwhile, will you take something?”
“Now that is not the way to put it. Of course I will take something. I like to see the glasses all brought in, and then the cupboards opened and then the young women all going about, with hot and cold water, and sugar-tongs.”
“We will try to do those little things aright,” the host answered very quietly, “by the time of your reappearance. Trotman is come to say that my mother will do herself the honour of receiving you.”
“Steenie, you stop here,” shouted Sir Remnant, getting up briskly and setting his eyebrows, eyes, and knees for business. “Steenie, you are a boy yet, and Court ladies prefer the society of men. No, no; I can pick up my cane myself. Just you sit down quietly, Steenie, and entertain Sir Roland till I come back.”
Sir Remnant, though somewhat of a bear by nature, prided himself on his courtly manners, when occasion called for them. “Gadzooks, sir,” he used to say, “nurse my vittels, if I can’t make a leg with the very best of them!” And he carried his stick in a manner to prove that he must have kissed hands, or toes, or something.
Entering Lady Valeria’s drawing-room in his daintiest manner, the old reprobate (as he called himself, sometimes with pride, and sometimes with terror, according as his spirits were up or down) made a slow and deep obeisance, then kissed the tips of his fingers, and waved them, and, seeing a smile on the lady’s face, ventured to lay his poor hand on his heart.
“Oh, Sir Remnant, you are too gallant!” said the lady, who in good truth despised him, and hated him also as the owner of great broad stripes of the land of Lorraine. “We never get such manners now; never since the Court was broken up: and things that it would not become me at all to hint at are encouraged.”
“You are right, my lady; you are right all over. Gadzooks—ahem, I beg your ladyship’s pardon.”
“By no means, Sir Remnant. The gentlemen always, in the best society, were allowed to say those little things. And I missed them sadly when I came down here.”
“Madam, my admiration of you increases with every word you speak. From what I hear of the mock-Court now (as you and I might call it), and my son has been hand-in-glove for years with the P.R., indeed, the whole number of their Royal Highnesses,—in short, I cannot tell your ladyship—things are very bad, very bad indeed.” And Sir Remnant made a grimace, as if his own whole life had been purity.