Could you have looked inside Mr. Fountain's head, you would have seen
ideas corresponding to the following diagrams:
[drawing]
Mr. Fountain courted the stomach of the county.
Without this, he knew, an angel could not reach its heart; and here
one of his eccentricities broke out. He drew a line, in his
dictatorial way, between dinner and feeding parties. "A dinner party
is two rubbers. Four gentlemen and four ladies sit round a circular
table; then each can hear what anyone says, and need not twist the
neck at every word. Foraging parties are from fourteen to thirty, set
up and down a plank, each separated from those he could talk to as
effectually as if the ocean rolled between, and bawling into one
person's ear amid the din of knives, forks, and multitude. I go to
those long strings of noisy duets because I must, but I give
_society_ at home."
The county people had just strength of mind to like the old boy's
sociable dinners, though not to imitate them, and an invitation from
him was very rarely declined when Lucy was with him.
And she was in her glory. She could carry complaisance such a long way
at Font Abbey--she was mistress of the house.
She listened with a wonderful appearance of interest to county
matters, i.e., to minute scandal and infinitesimal politics; to
the county cricket match and archery meeting; to the past ball and the
ball to come. In the drawing-room, when a cold fit fell on the
coterie, she would glide to one egotist after another, find out the
monotope, and set the critter Peter's, the Place de Concorde, the
Square of St.
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