perform quarantine in cotton, and serve seven years to pies and puddings.”

“Now, my dear, dear Basil”—

But Edwin, entering with a letter, destroyed Mrs. Jericho’s sentence in its early syllables.

“How curious!” cried Mrs. Jericho. “A letter from Mrs. Carraways. I know her dear hand from all my friends: there is[Pg 38] such a flow of the lady about it. Ha! the party. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Carraways request the honour of—’ yes; we are all invited. This is to be the great fête of the season. Jogtrot Lodge will be burningly brilliant. The richest people will be there, and I have heard,” and Mrs. Jericho lowered her voice, “I have heard, some of the nobility.”

[Pg 38]

“No doubt,” said Basil; “just a lord or two, to keep ’em sweet.”

“Really, Basil, you ought to go and live in a cave, upon wild elder-berries; you ought,” said Monica; and then she turned to her parent, with a look of touching helplessness. “But, my dear mamma; how are we to go?”

“Yes, mamma,” said the forlorn Agatha, “how are we to go?”

Mrs. Jericho was looking about her for an answer, when Basil observed—“I see; got no gowns. Ask a woman to a tea-party in the Garden of Eden, and she’d be sure to draw up her eyelids, and scream—‘I can’t go without a gown.’”

“I think, Basil”—said Miss Monica, a little majestically,—“you had better confine yourself to terriers, and things that, perhaps, you understand. What do you know about gowns?”

“Very true, my eider-duck, very true. And, mother, as I am to show at the Lodge, I must really have a supply of loyalty: for I quite sympathise with the girls; feel it quite impossible, my honoured lady, to appear at the same table twice in the same toothpick.”

Mrs. Jericho, tapping her palm with the missive from Jogtrot Lodge, was descending deep into meditation. Who shall say what visions rose before her? It had always been her ambition that her girls should—in her own nervous words—“make a blow in marriage.” And she felt—felt as a mother—that, perhaps, the time was come. The girls should go armed at all points for conquest. “It shall be so,” said Mrs. Jericho, self-communing; and then she serenely smiled upon all her children.

“Proud to take your word for it, my revered lady,” said Basil. 

 Prev. P 33/244 next