Miss Prior. “Mother, mother! I implore you—mother!”
Mr. Lovel enters. “So the children at high tea! How d’ye do, Mrs. Prior? I think we shall be able to manage that little matter for your second boy, Mrs. Prior.”
Mrs. Prior. “Heaven bless you,—bless you, my dear, kind benefactor! Don’t prevent me, Elizabeth: I must kiss his hand. There!”
And here the second bell rings, and I enter the morning-room, and can see Mrs. Prior’s great basket popped cunningly under the table-cloth. Her basket?—her porte-manteau, her porte-bouteille, her porte-gâteau, her porte-pantalon, her porte-butin in general. Thus I could see that every day Mrs. Prior visited Shrublands she gleaned greedily of the harvest. Well, Boaz was rich, and this ruthless Ruth was hungry and poor.
At the welcome summons of the second bell, Mr. and Mrs. Bonnington also made their appearance; the latter in the new cap which Mrs. Prior had admired, and which she saluted with a nod of smiling recognition: “Dear madam, it is lovely—I told you it was,” whispers Mrs. P., and the wearer of the blue ribbons turned her bonny, good-natured face towards the looking-glass, and I hope saw no reason to doubt Mrs. Prior’s sincerity. As for Bonnington, I could perceive that he had been taking a little nap before dinner,—a practice by which the appetite is improved, I think, and the intellect prepared for the bland prandial conversation.
“Have the children been quite good?” asks papa, of the governess.
“There are worse children, sir,” says Miss Prior, meekly.
“Make haste and have your dinner; we are coming into dessert!” cries Pop.
“You would not have us go to dine without your grandmother?” papa asks. Dine without Lady Baker, indeed! I should have liked to see him go to dinner without Lady Baker.
Pending her ladyship’s arrival, papa and Mr. Bonnington walk to the open window, and gaze on the lawn and the towers of Putney rising over the wall.