So now, if you please, we will go and dress—dinner being sharp six, recollect.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE GATHERING.—THE GRAND SPREAD ITSELF.
IF a dinner-party in town, with all the aids and appliances of sham-butlers, job-cooks, area-sneak-entrés, and extraneous confectionary, causes confusion in an establishment, how much more so must a party in the country, where, in addition to the guests, their servants, their horses, and their carriages, are to be accommodated. What a turning-out, and putting-up, and make-shifting, is there! What a grumbling and growling at not getting into the best stable, or at not having the state-vehicle put into the coach-house. If Solomon had not combined the wisdom of his namesake, with the patience of Job, he would have succumbed to the pressure from without. As it was, he kept persevering on until having got the last shandry-dan deposited under the hay house, he had just time to slip up-stairs to “clean himself,” and be ready to wait at dinner.
But what a commotion the party makes in the kitchen! Everybody is in a state of stew, from the gallant Betty Bone down to the hind’s little girl from Bonnyriggs Farm, whom they have “got in” for the occasion.
Nor do their anxieties end with the dishing-up of the dinner; for no sooner is it despatched, than that scarcely less onerous entertainment, the supper for the servants, has to be provided.
Then comes the coffee, then the tea, then the tray, and then the carriages wanted, then good night, good night, good night; most agreeable evening; no idea it was so late; and getting away. But the heat, and steam, and vapour of the kitchen overpowers us, and we gladly seek refuge in the newly “done-up” drawing-room.
In it behold the Major!—the Major in all the glory of the Yammerton harrier uniform, a myrtle-green coat, with a gold embroidered hare on the myrtle-green velvet collar, and puss with her ears well back, striding away over a dead gold surface, with a raised burnished rim of a button, a nicely-washed, stiffly-starched, white vest, with a yellow silk one underneath, black shorts, black silk stockings, and patent leather pumps. He has told off his very rare and singularly fine port wine, his prime old Madeira, matured in the West Indies; his nutty sherry, and excellently flavoured claret, all recently bought at the auction mart, not forgetting the ginger-pop-like champagne,—allowing the liberal measure of a pint for each person of the latter, and he is now trying to cool himself down into the easy-minded, unconcerned, every-day-dinner-giving host.
Mrs. Yammerton too, on whom devolves the care of the wax and the modérateurs, is here superintending her department—seeing that the hearth is properly swept, and distributing the Punches, and Posts, and “Ask Mamma’s” judiciously over the fine variegated table-cover. She is dressed in a rich silvery grey—with a sort of thing like a silver cow tie, with full tassels, twisted and twined serpent-like into her full, slightly streaked, dark hair.