“Go? Don’t I? But don’t call it horrid; really, now, don’t call it horrid!” cried the noble Marquis.
“Well—something has made you look far from well. You know how very well Lord Farintosh used to look, mamma—and to see him now, in only his second season—oh, it is melancholy!”
“God bless my soul, Miss Newcome! what do you mean? I think I look pretty well,” and the noble youth passed his hand through his hair. “It is a hard life, I know; that tearin’ about night after night, and sittin’ up till ever so much o’clock; and then all these races, you know, comin’ one after another—it’s enough to knock up any fellow. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Miss Newcome. I’ll go down to Codlington, to my mother; I will, upon my honour, and lie quiet all July, and then I’ll go to Scotland—and you shall see whether I don’t look better next season.”
“Do, Lord Farintosh!” said Ethel, greatly amused, as much, perhaps, at the young Marquis as at her cousin Clive, who sat whilst the other was speaking, fuming with rage, at his table.
“What are you doing, Clive?” she asks.
“I was trying to draw; Lord knows who—Lord Newcome, who was killed at the battle of Bosworth,” said the artist, and the girl ran to look at the picture.
“Why, you have made him like Punch!” cries the young lady.
“It’s a shame caricaturing one’s own flesh and blood, isn’t it?” asked Clive, gravely.
“What a droll, funny picture!” exclaims Lady Anne. “Isn’t it capital, Lord Farintosh?”
“I dare say—I confess I don’t understand that sort of thing,” says his lordship. “Don’t, upon my honour. There’s Odo Carton, always making those caricatures—I don’t understand ’em. You’ll come up to town to-morrow, won’t you? And you’re goin’ to Lady Hm’s, and to Hm and Hm’s, ain’t you?” (The names of these aristocratic places of resort were quite inaudible.) “You mustn’t let Miss Blackcap have it all her own way, you know, that you mustn’t.”