Mrs.
Hobson had actually assumed clean gloves for this festive occasion. Sam
stared at all the "Nobs:" and insisted upon being introduced to
"Farintosh," and congratulated his lordship with much graceful ease:
and then pushed about the rooms perseveringly hanging on to Alfred's
jacket. "I say, I wish you wouldn't call me Al'," I heard Mr. Alfred say
to his cousin. Seeing my face, Mr. Samuel ran up to claim acquaintance.
He was good enough to say he thought Farintosh seemed devilish haughty.
Even my wife could not help saying, that Mr. Sam was an odious little
creature.
So it was for young Alfred, and his brothers and sisters, who would want
help and protection in the world, that Ethel was about to give up her
independence, her inclination perhaps, and to bestow her life on yonder
young nobleman. Looking at her as a girl devoting herself to her family,
her sacrifice gave her a melancholy interest in our eyes. My wife and I
watched her, grave and beautiful, moving through the rooms, receiving and
returning a hundred greetings, bending to compliments, talking with this
friend and that, with my lord's lordly relations, with himself, to whom
she listened deferentially; faintly smiling as he spoke now and again;
doing the honours of her mother's house.
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