"I have done, ordered, and paid every thing."
"Welcome, my dear, a thousand times!" replied Lady Goodman; "come, and tell me all the news."
"Ah! Ferret," exclaimed Sir Roger, who entered at this moment, "I rejoice to see you. Sad weather this; I have been as dead as ditch water, I can tell you, and am glad that you are come to keep me awake. The glass too is rising; you bring good luck with you; but here is Mr. Hartland riding up the avenue; I must go and meet him."
"Oh! I'm glad that you have asked Mr. Hartland; that's a nice man; I've seen a great deal of him lately," said Miss Ferret, as she turned to Lady Goodman; "but have'nt you got Miss Robinson with you? I long to see her: How does she look? when did she come? does she stay long?"
"She arrived on Wednesday, stays a month, and I never saw her looking better," answered Lady Goodman.
"A nice thing," said Miss Ferret, "if we could make up a match between Mr. Hartland and Miss Robinson, wouldn't it, Lady G.?"
"So it would;" replied her Ladyship; "but though your fame stands high, I think you'll hardly have ingenuity to bring that matter to bear. They say that he's not at all a marrying man, and if he's one of the bashful fraternity, there will not be time to get over the horrors of presentation to a stranger, before Harriet will leave us to go to her sister in Scotland."
"We must only not lose time," said Miss Ferret, "but make hay while the sun shines."
The door opened, and Sir Roger presented Mr. Hartland to the ladies. Though not an elegant man, there was nothing either coarse or revolting in his demeanour. On the contrary, he comported himself extremely well, in a plain and equable manner, without effort or perturbation, whatever were the society into which he happened to fall. A phlegmatic temperament, combining with constitutional prudence, and his mother's counsel, had preserved Mr. Hartland in early life from those exciting circumstances which often plunge young people into love entanglements; and incredible as it may seem to those who have been differently situated, it is not the less true, that he had lived so little in mixed society, and had been so little in the way of flirtation, that no rumour of marriage had ever been coupled with his name; and thus at an age when others have handed over their sensibilities to a new generation, this serene and unaffected man was only commencing his career of life, with all the simplicity of untried youth.
The company assembled; and such as have experienced the up-hill work of conversation at a country dinner, when the subjects of weather, crops, the moon, and the roads are pumped dry, will easily believe, that if Miss Ferret were not the most polished woman in the world, her animation rendered her, notwithstanding, the most agreeable ingredient upon many occasions, in those assemblies which her presence enlivened. She had the art to shake a drawing-room together, if we may use such a simile; and wherever she was she contrived to prevent that stratification of men and women which madame de Staël has so happily described, as characteristic of an English provincial half hour before dinner. Miss Ferret had seen the last newspaper, or talked with "an intelligent man who had stepped from the coach" in the precise moment of her setting out; or she had heard a paragraph read from a London letter; or had a conference with the post-master immediately before she quitted home; in short she knew something either true or false, which no one else happened to know, of every thing and every body. Thin and active, she glided about the room, and brought people into actual contact who had never interchanged a look till she appeared. Like the grouting of a wall she compacted and cemented what was nothing but a heap of loose disjointed stones, till her vivacious tongue poured in its eloquence amongst them.