Me and my poor dear mother being—I don’t mind telling you on the strict—prepared for a struggle with Wretchingham’s family, was more than surprised when, after a Saturday to Monday of anxious expectancy, a note on plain paper with a coronet stamped in white from Lady Blandish informed us that her ladyship had made up her mind to call. And she kept the appointment as punctual as clockwork, driving up in a taxi, and perfectly plainly dressed; and when I made my entrance in the dearest morning arrangement of Valenciennes lace and baby ribbon you ever saw, I will say she met me like a lady should her son’s intended, and said that Lord Blandish and her had come to the determination to make the best of their son’s choice, and invited me down to stay at Blandish Towers, in Huntshire, when the run of The Pop-in-Taw Girl broke off for the autumn holidays.
“Oh,” I said, “Lady Blandish,” I said, “of course, I shall be perfectly delighted,” and let her know how unwilling I felt as a lady to make bad blood between Lord Wretchingham and his family. “But, of course,” I said, “my duty to the man who I have vowed to love and honor leaves me no choice.”
“My dear Miss Tossie Trilbina,” she said, “your sentiments towards Wretchingham do you the utmost credit,” she said, and I explained to her that though the surname sounds foreign, there is nothing of the Italiano-ice-creamo about yours truly.
“Oh!” she said, in that sweetly nasty way that the Upper Ten do seem to have the knack of, “do not trouble to explain, my dear Miss Trilbina. Lord Blandish and myself are quite prepared,” she said, “to accept the inevitable,” she said, and kissed me, and smiled a great deal at my poor dear mother, who was explaining to her ladyship that her family did not regard an alliance with the aristocracy as anything but a match between equals, and that my education had been of the most expensive and classy kind you can imagine. And smiled herself into her taxi, and motored away.
That was in the middle of the summer season, and I bespoke my costumes for my visit to my new relations next day. Of course, I expected a house-party of really hall-marky, classy swells, and meant to do the honors and help Lady Blandish to entertain as was my duty bound. And my shooting and golfing and angling costumes, and motoring get-up and riding-habit, and tea-gowns and dinner-dresses and ball-confections, were a fair old treat to see, and did Madame Battens credit.
Wretchingham drove me down in his 18.26 h.p. “Gadabout,” with my dresser-maid in the glass case behind, and an omnibus motor from the garage behind us with my dressing-baskets, and I thought of poor dear mother at home, I don’t mind telling you, when the Towers rose up at the end of an oak avenue longer than Regent Street, and Wretchingham’s two sisters came running down the steps to hug their brother and be presented to their new sister, and the white-headed family butler threw a glass door open and Wretchingham led me in between six footmen, bowing, three on each side.
What price poor little me when I heard there wasn’t any House-Party? Cheap wasn’t the word, with all those costumes in my dress-baskets. However, I faked myself up in a frock that I really felt was a credit to a person of my rank and station, and swam down to what her ladyship called a “quiet family dinner.”
The Earl of Blandish came in, leaning on his secretary’s arm, with a gouty foot, and did the heavy father, calling me “my dear.” I sat on his lordship’s right hand, and certainly he was most agreeable, telling me the black oak carvings in the great hall were by Jacob Bean, and that the walled garden with a separate division for every month in the year and a bowling alley in the middle had been made by a lady ancestor of his who lived in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and was a friend of the person who wrote Shakespeare.
“Oh!” I said, “I suppose,” I said, “in those days bowls were not considered a low form of amusement. Though if ever my poor dear mother and father did have to call words, it would be over his weakness for bowls and skittles as a waste of time and leading to betting and drink. And as for Shakespeare, I call it all very well for literary swells with nothing else to do,” I said, “but what the Halls cater for is the business gentleman who drops in with a pal to hear the popular favorite in a ten-o’clock turn over a cigar and a small Scotch. And gardening never was much in my line,” I said, “though when a child it was my favorite amusement to grow mustard and cress on damp flannel. Hunting is my passion,” I said, “and as Wretchingham has told me you keep a first-class stable of hunters and hacks, besides carriage beasts, I hope to show your lordship that I shan’t disgrace you,” I said, and asked him when the next meet would be?
The Earl’s old eyebrows went up to the top of his aristocratic bald forehead as he said not until October, and then only for cubbing, and the two girls flushed up red, trying not to laugh, and wriggled in their chairs, and Lady Blandish said in her nice nasty way that every day brought innovations, and one might as well ride to hounds in August as skate on artificial ice in May.