“I am so grieved they cannot come,” said Mrs Mitford, when they were all seated at dinner, which had been delayed. “I am so sorry, my dear, for you; but perhaps you might try a game with John—and the party could be asked for another day.”
“I am so glad,” said Kate. “It is so nice to escape the croquet-parties, and all the stuff one has to think about at home.”
“But, my dear, you must miss your amusements,” said Mrs Mitford. “I should not think a quiet life was the kind of life for you.”
“Changes are what I like,” said Kate, bravely. “I could not live always in a turmoil, and I could not live alwa{126}ys in a hermitage. I should like sometimes the one and sometimes the other. The dreadful thing would be, to be always the same.”
{126}
Mrs Mitford gave her son a piteous look, and then cast an instinctive glance round the room. She did not herself feel the full meaning that was in her eyes. She glanced at all the signs of her own changeless existence. For years and years she had visited the same places at the same hours, sat down to the same work, made the same engagements, discharged the same duties. The dinner-party, which, contrary to her own lights, she was going to give in honour of Kate, would have the same people at it as had been at her first dinner-party after her wedding. She said to herself that if John were rich he could give his wife a great deal more change; but still there remained the fact that John’s wife would have the parish to think of, and the schools, and the old women. It would not do, alas! it could not do, Mrs Mitford concluded, as she rose from dinner with a sigh. And yet it would be such a thing for John.
{127}
{127}
And to see poor John’s miserable look when he came into the drawing-room, and found that Kate had a headache and had gone to bed. “It must have been that confounded camp,” he said, through his teeth, which grieved his mother more.
“Oh, my dear, don’t swear,” she said; “things are bad enough without that.”
“What things? and what do you mean, mother?” growled John.
“It is—that girl. I am so sorry she came here—so sorry you saved her, John; that she should come where no one wanted her, disturbing my boy!”
“Sorry I saved her! Are you mad, mother?” cried
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