“Mamma! Why can’t one of the others do that? You know I’m not very fond of Mr Rumford, and I’m sure he doesn’t like me.”
“Don’t talk nonsense! It’s not a question of like or dislike, you will do as I wish, he doesn’t come to see you. Audrey and Doris rather expect that Mr Carter and Mr Purchase may drop in to tea, so they are changing. Eveleen has a slight headache, and is lying down; she thinks it possible that sometime during the afternoon Mr Hammond may call, and she wants to be well enough to receive him. So until some of us are ready you will have to act as hostess.”
“In this attire?”
“You will have no time to change; somebody may come at any second; and I tell you again that they’re not coming to see you. You know very well that no one ever looks at you, whatever you have on. But run upstairs and get your hat off, and some of that unbecoming colour off your face, and do try to look decent.”
I obeyed her.
As I went upstairs I was conscious of some most singular sensations, nearly approaching to forebodings. It was absurd, yet at the bottom of my heart I suspected that if they only could have guessed, none of them would have asked me to receive those men. If disaster followed, their feelings would be beyond description, while the fault would certainly not be mine.
I was just entering my room when mamma called out to me.
“By the way, Norah, if Major Tibbet should come before I am ready keep him as much amused as possible. You know how impatient he is, and how easily bored; but I won’t be an instant longer than I can help.”
So Major Tibbet was coming also! There was evidently going to be a crowd of them as usual; though, as mamma had been careful to observe, none of them ever came to see me. But, on this occasion, it was remotely possible that a change might come o’er the spirit of the scene. Something within me seemed to hint at it.
As for Major Paul Tibbet, he was one of my pet abominations. An unsoldierly old man, painted, padded, and wigged. I should think that when he had got all off that he had put on there was nothing left of him but a mere husk. And so conceited! He talked of nothing else but women, and his conquests of them. It was nauseous. What mamma could see in him was beyond my comprehension. Yet it had dawned on me more and more, and the others had dropped hints, that if he asked her she might become Mrs Tibbet, and present us with a new papa. What a prospect! That made-up relic, whom I could have picked up and swung over my head with one hand, my papa! I remembered my father as a tall, handsome man, brave to the point of recklessness, who had broken his neck while hunting. That anyone could dream of substituting that effigy for him! I gathered that he had a deal of money. I fear that mamma is not so indifferent to that consideration as she might be.