"That may do for fashionable Lunnon folks," muttered old Rushmere, "but it won't do here. If you can't yeat a good dinner when 'tis ready, I will."
"My wife will soon accommodate herself to country hours," said Gilbert, laughing. "The fine, fresh air has made me very hungry. So, when you have changed your dress, Sophy, I shall be glad to eat my dinner."
"The dinner can be put back for an hour," said Dorothy, "if it would suit Mrs. Gilbert better."
"She must learn to take things as she finds them," said Gilbert, casting a significant look at his wife. "I know of old, that father never will wait for his dinner."
"Not for King George!" cried Rushmere, slapping his knee with vigour. "A' never could see any sense in spoiling good food."
"But you know, Mr. Rushmere," said the young lady, in a soft dulcet voice, and sheathing her claws, as a cat does, in velvet, "it requires time for town-bred people to accommodate themselves to fashions so totally unlike what they have been used to. You must have patience with me, and I shall soon get into your ways."
"All right," returned Lawrence, rather doggedly. "I be too old to learn new tricks—an' what's more, a' don't mean to try."
"Nobody wants you, father," said Mrs. Gilbert, giving him a very small white hand.
"Let's kiss an' be friends then," quoth Rushmere, pulling her face down to him, at the risk of demolishing all the flowers in her gipsy hat, and imprinting on her cheek a salute, that sounded through the room like the crack of a pistol.
The young lady drew back and laughed, but she cast a side-long glance at her mother, which seemed to say, "the vulgar fellow, how can I tolerate him?"