Wives and Daughters Page #3

								

o'clock, coffee was brought round; and this was a signal of the
approaching carriage that was to take them back to their own homes;
whither they returned with the happy consciousness of a well-spent
day, but with some fatigue at the long-continued exertion of behaving
their best, and talking on stilts for so many hours. Nor were
Lady Cumnor and her daughters free from something of the same
self-approbation, and something, too, of the same fatigue; the
fatigue that always follows on conscious efforts to behave as will
best please the society you are in.

For the first time in her life, Molly Gibson was to be included among
the guests at the Towers. She was much too young to be a visitor at
the school, so it was not on that account that she was to go; but it
had so happened that one day when Lord Cumnor was on a "pottering"
expedition, he had met Mr. Gibson, the doctor of the neighbourhood,
coming out of the farm-house my lord was entering; and having some
small question to ask the surgeon (Lord Cumnor seldom passed any
one of his acquaintance without asking a question of some sort--not
always attending to the answer; it was his mode of conversation), he
accompanied Mr. Gibson to the out-building, to a ring in the wall of
which the surgeon's horse was fastened. Molly was there too, sitting
square and quiet on her rough little pony, waiting for her father.
Her grave eyes opened large and wide at the close neighbourhood and
evident advance of "the earl;" for to her little imagination the
grey-haired, red-faced, somewhat clumsy man, was a cross between an
arch-angel and a king.

"Your daughter, eh, Gibson?--nice little girl, how old? Pony wants
grooming though," patting it as he talked. "What's your name,
my dear? He's sadly behindhand with his rent, as I was saying,
but if he's really ill, I must see after Sheepshanks, who is a
hardish man of business. What's his complaint? You'll come to our
school-scrimmage on Thursday, little girl--what's-your-name? Mind you
send her, or bring her, Gibson; and just give a word to your groom,
for I'm sure that pony wasn't singed last year, now, was he? Don't
forget Thursday, little girl--what's-your-name?--it's a promise
between us, is it not?" And off the earl trotted, attracted by the
sight of the farmer's eldest son on the other side of the yard.

Mr. Gibson mounted, and he and Molly rode off. They did not speak
for some time. Then she said, "May I go, papa?" in rather an anxious
little tone of voice.

"Where, my dear?" said he, wakening up out of his own professional
thoughts.

"To the Towers--on Thursday, you know. That gentleman" (she was shy
of calling him by his title), "asked me."

"Would you like it, my dear? It has always seemed to me rather a
tiresome piece of gaiety--rather a tiring day, I mean--beginning so
early--and the heat, and all that."

"Oh, papa!" said Molly, reproachfully.

"You'd like to go then, would you?"

"Yes; if I may!--He asked me, you know. Don't you think I may?--he
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