But you must call for all that: grandmamma may become more good-humoured:
or if you don't come she may suspect I told you not to come: and to
battle with her day after day is no pleasure, sir, I assure you. Here is
Lord Farintosh coming to take me to dance. You must not speak to me all
the evening, mind that, sir," and away goes the young lady in a waltz
with the Marquis.
On the same evening--as he was biting his nails, or cursing his fate, or
wishing to invite Lord Farintosh into the neighbouring garden of Berkeley
Square, whence the policeman might carry to the station-house the corpse
of the survivor,--Lady Kew would bow to him with perfect graciousness; on
other nights her ladyship would pass and no more recognise him than the
servant who opened the door.
If she was not to see him at her grandmother's house, and was not
particularly unhappy at his exclusion, why did Miss Newcome encourage Mr.
Clive so that he should try and see her? If Clive could not get into the
little house in Queen Street, why was Lord Farintosh's enormous cab-horse
looking daily into the first-floor windows of that street? Why were
little quiet dinners made for him, before the opera, before going to the
play, upon a half-dozen occasions, when some of the old old Kew port was
brought out of the cellar, where cobwebs had gathered round it ere
Farintosh was born? The dining-room was so tiny that not more than five
people could sit at the little round table: that is, not more than Lady
Kew and her granddaughter, Miss Crochet, the late vicar's daughter, at
Kewbury, one of the Miss Toadins, and Captain Walleye, or Tommy Henchman,
Farintosh's kinsman, and admirer, who were of no consequence, or old Fred
Tiddler, whose wife was an invalid, and who was always ready at a
moment's notice? Crackthorpe once went to one of these dinners, but that
young soldier being a frank and high-spirited youth, abused the
entertainment and declined more of them.
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