What has an old fellow
like me to say to your young dandies or old dowagers?"
"Mamma is very odd and sometimes very captious, my dear Colonel," said
Lady Anne, with a blush; "she suffers so frightfully from tic that we are
all bound to pardon her."
Truth to tell, old Lady Kew had been particularly rude to Colonel Newcome
and Clive. Ethel's birthday befell in the spring, on which occasion she
was wont to have a juvenile assembly, chiefly of girls of her own age and
condition; who came, accompanied by a few governesses, and they played
and sang their little duets and choruses together, and enjoyed a gentle
refection of sponge-cakes, jellies, tea, and the like.--The Colonel, who
was invited to this little party, sent a fine present to his favourite
Ethel; and Clive and his friend J. J. made a funny series of drawings,
representing the life of a young lady as they imagined it, and drawing
her progress from her cradle upwards: now engaged with her doll, then
with her dancing-master; now marching in her back-board; now crying over
her German lessons: and dressed for her first ball finally, and bestowing
her hand upon a dandy, of preternatural ugliness, who was kneeling at her
feet as the happy man.
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