CHAPTER XVIII.
I meet Bobby retiring to the kitchen to cook his mushrooms himself. He invites me to join him, but I refuse. It is the first time in the annals of history that I was ever known to say no to such an offer. Bobby regards me with reproachful anger, and makes a muffled remark, the drift of which I understand to be that, though I may pretend not to be, I am grown fine, as he always said I should. To-day it seems to me as if breakfast would never end. It is one of our fixed laws that no one shall leave the table until father gives the signal by saying grace. Sometimes, when he is in one of his unfortunate moods, he keeps us all staring at our empty cups and platters for half an hour. To-day I watch with warm anxiety the progress downward of the tea in his cup. At last he has come to the grounds. He lays down the Times. We all joyfully half bow our heads, in expectation of the wonted "For what we have received," etc., but speedily and disappointedly raise them again.
"Jane, can you spare me another cup?" and reburies himself in a long leader. Behind the shelter of the great sheet, I make a hideous contortion across the table at Sir Roger, who has fallen with great docility into our ways, and is looking back at me now with that gentle, steadfast serenity which is the leading characteristic of his face, but which this morning is, I cannot help thinking, a good deal disturbed, hard as he is trying to hide it. There are, thank Heaven, no more false starts. Next time that he lays down the paper, we are all afraid to bend our heads, for fear that the movement shall break the charm, and induce him to send for a fourth cup—he has already had three—but no! release has come at last.
"For what we have received the Lord make us truly thankful!"
Almost before we have reached "thankful," there is a noise of several chairs pushed back. Before you could say "knife!" we are all out of the room. All but Sir Roger! In deference, I suppose, to the feelings of the friend of his infancy, and not to appear too anxious to leave him—Sir Roger ought to have married Barbara, they two are always thinking of other people's feelings—he delays a little, and indeed they emerge together and find me sitting on one of the uncomfortable, stiff hall-chairs, on which nobody ever sits. To my dismay, I hear father say something about the chestnut colt's legs, and I know that another delay is in store for me. Sir Roger comes over to me, and takes his wide-awake from the stand beside me.
"We are going to the stables," he says, patting my shoulder.
I make a second hideous face. Often have I been complimented by the boys, on the flexibility of my features.
"I shall be back in ten minutes," he says, in a low voice; "will you wait for me in the morning-room?"
"I suppose I must," say I, reluctantly, with a disgusted and disappointed drawing down of the corners of my mouth.