It was decided that Mrs.
Hilbery, Katharine, Rodney, and Henry should drive to Lincoln, and any
one else who wished to go should follow on bicycles or in the pony-
cart. Every one who stayed at Stogdon House had to make this
expedition to Lincoln in obedience to Lady Otway's conception of the
right way to entertain her guests, which she had imbibed from reading
in fashionable papers of the behavior of Christmas parties in ducal
houses. The carriage horses were both fat and aged, still they
matched; the carriage was shaky and uncomfortable, but the Otway arms
were visible on the panels. Lady Otway stood on the topmost step,
wrapped in a white shawl, and waved her hand almost mechanically until
they had turned the corner under the laurel-bushes, when she retired
indoors with a sense that she had played her part, and a sigh at the
thought that none of her children felt it necessary to play theirs.
The carriage bowled along smoothly over the gently curving road. Mrs.
Hilbery dropped into a pleasant, inattentive state of mind, in which
she was conscious of the running green lines of the hedges, of the
swelling ploughland, and of the mild blue sky, which served her, after
the first five minutes, for a pastoral background to the drama of
human life; and then she thought of a cottage garden, with the flash
of yellow daffodils against blue water; and what with the arrangement
of these different prospects, and the shaping of two or three lovely
phrases, she did not notice that the young people in the carriage were
almost silent.
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