Theo and her mother were standing together looking from their place of observation. There was a small illumination at Mrs. Brown's tart- and tea-shop, by which our friends could see one lady getting Mr. Richardson's hat and stick, and another tying a shawl round his neck, after which he walked home.
“Oh dear me! he does not look like Grandison!” cries Theo.
“I rather think I wish we had not seen him, my dear,” says mamma, who has been described as a most sentimental woman and eager novel-reader; and here again they were interrupted by Miss Hetty, who cried:
“Never mind that little fat man, but look yonder, mamma.”
And they looked yonder. And they saw, in the first place, Mr. Warrington undergoing the honour of a presentation to the Countess of Yarmouth, who was still followed by the obsequious peer and prelate with blue ribands. And now the Countess graciously sate down to a card-table, the Bishop and the Earl and a fourth person being her partners. And now Mr. Warrington came into the embrasure of the window with a lady whom they recognised as the lady whom they had seen for a few minutes at Oakhurst.
“How much finer he is!” remarks mamma.
“How he is improved in his looks! What has he done to himself?” asks Theo.
“Look at his grand lace frills and rules! My dear, he has not got on our shirts any more,” cries the matron.
“What are you talking about, girls?” asks papa, reclining on his sofa, where, perhaps, he was dozing after the fashion of honest house-fathers.
The girls said how Harry Warrington was in the window, talking with his cousin Lady Maria Esmond.