“Yes, you do. You know Alice Lorraine. It is poor Sir Roland’s daughter.”
CHAPTER LXXI.
AN ARGUMENT REFUTED.
While these things were going on down in the valley, a nice little argument was raging in the dining-room of the old house on the hill. By reason of the bitter weather, Mr. Binns and John Trotman had brought in two large three-winged screens of ancient poikolo-Dædal canvas. Upon them was depicted every bird that flies, and fish that swims, and beast that walks on the face of the earth, besides many that never did anything of the sort. And betwixt them and a roaring fire sat six good gentlemen, taking their wine in the noble manner of the period.
Under the wings of one great screen, Sir Roland Lorraine, and Colonel Clumps, and Parson Hales were sitting. In the other, encamped Sir Remnant Chapman, Stephen, his son, and Mr. John Ducksbill, a fundamentally trusty solicitor, to see to the deed in the morning.
The state of the weather brought about all this. It would have been better for the bridegroom to come with a dash of horses in the morning, stir up the church, and the law, and the people, and scatter a pound’s worth of halfpence. But after so long an experience of the cold white mood of the weather, common sense told everybody, that if a thing was to be done at all, all who were to do it must be kept pretty well together.
But, alas! even when the weather makes everybody cry, “Alas!” it is worse than the battles of the wind and snow, for six male members of the human race to look at one another with the fire in their front, and the deuce of a cold draught in their backs, and wine without stint at their elbows, and dwell wholly together in harmony. And the most exciting of all subjects unluckily had been started—or rather might be said “inevitably.” Six gentlemen could not, in any reason, be hoped to sit over their wine, without getting into the subject of the ladies.
This is a thing to be always treated with a deep reserve, and confidential hint of something, that must not go beyond a hint. Every man thinks, with his glass in his hand, that he knows a vast deal more about woman than any woman’s son before him. Opinions at once begin to clash. Every man speaks from his own experience; which, upon so grand a matter, is as the claw of a lobster grasping at a whale—the largest of the mammals.
“Rector, I tell you,” repeated Sir Remnant, with an angry ring of his wine-glass, “that you know less than nothing about it, sir. All the more to your credit, of course, of course. A parson must stick to his cloth and his gown, and keep himself clear of the petticoats.”
“But, my dear sir, my own three daughters——”