The kind lady screwed up her comfortable features into fanciful imitation of a famished wolf. The young man smiled.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t often get tired with walking. And then think what I had to look forward to at the end of it.’
Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright looked conscious for a moment.
‘Ah yes,’ she replied with some feeling. ‘I am afraid we are dreadfully thoughtless, Mr. Restormel. It must be dreadful for you to come back here and find a lot of new people kicking about in your own house, as it were; I do hope you’ll try not to think about it. When Jack told me how he had met you at Oxford, and who you were, and all about you, I declare I felt quite shy and uncomfortable at the thought of asking you to pay us a visit. And to arrive just to-night, too, when we have got a sort of little dinner-party too. I am sure you must find it very trying.’
The handsome boy smiled down at her again. She was evidently in anxiety that he should be happy and set at his ease, though her methods lacked subtlety. He accepted her sympathy, but diverted her conversation.
‘Oh,’ he replied, ‘we come and go, all of us, and it never does to bother about what one cannot help. Anyhow, I am sure Restormel never had jollier, kinder people in it than it has now. Tell me, Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright, who is coming to dinner to-night?’
‘What, has not Jack told you?’ cried the hostess, with a little inflection of pride, turning to her son. ‘Well, there are Sir Nigel Pope and his new second wife, and the Martin Massingers with two sisters, and the Archdeacon and Mrs. Widge, who are staying with them, and the Lemmingtons, and the Goddards, and the Pooles—yes, and the Darnleys—from Brakelond, you know, Lady Gundred and her husband.’
‘Oh, Lady Gundred. Of course I have heard all about them. My mother used to see a good deal of her at one time, before the place was sold.’
‘Oh yes, how stupid I am! I am always forgetting that you know all the people about far better than we do, though only by hearsay, most of them. Yes, of course you know about dear Lady Gundred. You will be next her at dinner, on the other side from my husband. What a comfort! You will be able to talk to her about old times. I am afraid you will be in starvation corner, by the way, Mr. Restormel, but I thought—even before I remembered that you knew her—that you would not mind that if you were next to dear Lady Gundred.’
‘You must remember,’ answered young Restormel, ‘that the place was sold when I was only six months old, so I cannot feel that I have any very intimate acquaintance with Lady Gundred. Tell me some more about her; what is she like?’