"How did you like the gentlemen, Dolly?" her father asked here.
"I had hardly anything to do with them, except the two Mr. St. Legers."
"How did you like them? I suppose, on your principle, you would tell me that you liked the old one?"
"Never mind them," said Mrs. Copley; "go on about the dinner. What did you have?"
"Oh, everything, mother; and the most beautiful fruit at dessert; fruit from their own hothouses; and I saw the hothouses, afterwards. Most beautiful! the purple and white grapes were hanging in thick clusters all over the vines; and quantities of different sorts of pines were growing in another hothouse. I had a bunch of Frontignacs this morning before breakfast, father; and I never had grapes taste so good."
"Yes, you must have wanted something," said Mr. Copley; "wandering about among flowers and fruit till ten o'clock without anything to eat!"
"Poor Mr. St. Leger!" said Dolly. "But he was very kind. They were all very kind. If they only would not drink wine so!"
"Wine!" Mrs. Copley exclaimed.
"It was all dinner time; it began with the soup, and it did not end with the fruit, for the gentlemen sat on drinking after we had left them. And they had been drinking all dinner time; the decanters just went round and round."
"Nonsense, Dolly!" her father said; "you are unaccustomed to the world, that is all. There was none but the most moderate drinking."