“He’s a selfish, stupid, unprincipled fellow,” said Josie, with an air of cold decision. “He has done everything he could to disgrace himself and us. I am not going to spoil my life on his account, and I shall never mention his name, or that of the servant-girl he has chosen to bring into the family.”
“I think you are too hard; I do indeed, Josie!” said her mother, “though he deserves very little at our hands. You are not his mother, my dear, and you don’t know how it feels. But I can’t think we should deny ourselves anything in society for his sake. Just at the beginning of the gay season in Sydney, too!”
Laura, who had looked extremely grave throughout the discussion, now felt inclined to smile at Mrs. Grandison’s distressful finale. She rose, and looked at her father to explain the absolute necessity for their departure.
“We shall see you all here at dinner on Thursday, then, mind that!” said their hostess. “And, Laura, put on your best bib and tucker. I’ll have some of our show young men to meet you.”
“I’m sure I don’t know where you’ll find them, mother,” said Josie, disdainfully. “Since the Lorenzo went to Fiji, there hasn’t been a man in Sydney fit to look at.”
The coachman’s temper was not improved by the length of time during which he had been kept waiting. One of the highly-conditioned, irregularly-exercised horses had indeed revenged himself by pawing and scraping, the result of which was a hole in the gravel, which caused the head gardener to use a much stronger expression when he saw it than, still mindful of kirk and minister, he was in the habit of employing.
As they went spinning down the incline to Double Bay, in the easy, well-hung carriage, her father said, “Wouldn’t you like to have a drag like this, my dear, to put your husband down at his office in if you were married and lived in Sydney?”
“That means if I were somebody else altogether,” replied Laura, with a slight blush. “I can’t say how I might act then. But if you ask me whether I would change places with the poor people in the splendid house we have just left, I say, with the country mouse, ‘Give me my hollow tree and liberty,’ or rather our love and affection for each other. I don’t think anything could happen to alter that; do you, father?”
Mr. Stamford answered by a quick, decided movement rather than by words. It is to be hoped no one in that fashionable suburb observed the action; but even if so, the faultlessly aristocratic appearance of the equipage in which the offenders sat would have sufficed to condone the offence.
A comparatively short time saw them at Hyde Park—too short, indeed, it seemed to Laura, eager to enjoy the varied beauty of the scene. The splendours of the dying day, the roll of the surge upon the outer shore, the rising ocean breeze, all these seemed to the keen and cultured sense of the enthusiastic maiden but portions of a wondrous panorama, of which each hour furnished a fresh presentment.