The night before his departure Frank dined with Miss Ley, alone as both preferred, and during the meal, as was their wont, they discussed the weather and the crops. Each was sufficiently fond of his own ideas to brook no interruption from the service of food, and chose rather to keep till afterwards any topic that needed free discussion. But when the coffee was brought into the library, Miss Ley being comfortably stretched on a sofa, and Frank, with his legs on an armchair, lit his cigar, they looked at one another with a sigh of relief and a smile of self-satisfaction.
“You are going down to Jeyston, aren’t you?” he asked.
“I don’t think I can face it. As the time grows nearer, I begin to feel more wretched at the prospect, and I’m convinced I shall have worried myself into a dangerous illness by the appointed day. I don’t see why at my age I should deliberately expose myself to the tedium of a house-party. Paul Castillyon has notions of old-fashioned hospitality, and every morning after breakfast asks what you would like to do; (as if any sensible woman knew at that preposterous hour what she wanted to do in the afternoon!) but it’s a mere form, because he has already mapped out your day, and you’ll find every minute has its fixed entertainment. Then, it bores me to extinction to be affable to people I despise, and polite—— Oh, how I hate having to be polite! A visit of two days makes me feel as if I should like to swear like a Billingsgate fishwife, just to relieve the monotony of good manners.”
Frank smiled, and drinking his Benedictine, settled himself still more comfortably in his chair.
“By the way, talking of good manners, did I tell you that just before I grew seedy I went to three dances?”
“I thought you hated them?”
“So I do, but I went with a special object. The chief thing that struck me was the execrable breeding of the people. Supper was to be ready at midnight, and at half-past eleven they began to gather round the closed doors of the supper-room; by twelve there was as large a crowd as at the pit-entrance of a theatre, and when the doors were thrown open they struggled and pushed and fought like wild beasts. I’m sure the humble pittite is never half so violent, and they just flung themselves on the tables like ravening wolves. Now, I should have thought polite persons showed no excessive anxiety to be fed. By Jove! they made a greater clamour than the animals at the Zoo.”
“You’re so bourgeois, dear Frank,” smiled Miss Ley. “Why do you suppose people go to a dance, if not to have a good square meal for nothing? But that was surely not your object.”
“No; I went because I’d made up my mind to marry.”
“Good heavens!”