"
"Well, have a headache, and can't come down."
"So I certainly should; but, most unfortunately, I have an objection
to tell fibs on a Sunday."
"You are quite right; we should rest from our usual employments one
day-ha! ha! and so go at it fresher to-morrow--haw! ho! Come, Lucy,
don't you be so exclusive. Eve Dodd is a merry girl. She comes and
amuses me when you are not here, and David, by all accounts, is a fine
young fellow, and as modest as a girl of fifteen; they will make me
laugh, especially Eve, and it would be hard at my age, I think, if I
might not ask whom I like--to tea."
"So it would," put in Lucy, hastily; she added, coaxing, "it shall
have its own way--it shall have what makes it laugh."
Long before eight o'clock the Fountains had forgotten that they had
invited the Dodds.
Not so Eve. She was all in a flutter, and hesitated between two
dresses, and by some blessed inspiration decided for the plainest; but
her principal anxiety was, not about herself, but about David's
deportment before the Queen of Fashion, for such report proclaimed
Miss Fountain. "And those fine ladies are so satirical," said Eve to
herself; "but I will lecture him going along."
Dinner time, and, by consequence, tea time, came earlier in those
days; so, about eight o'clock, a tall, square-shouldered young fellow
was walking in the moonlight toward Font Abbey, Eve holding his hand,
and tripping by his side, and lecturing him on deportment very gravely
while dancing around him and pulling him all manner of ways, like your
solid tune with your gamboling accompaniment, a combination now in
vogue.
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