If you really have, show it me _some other
way,_ and not by making me unhappy."
"Well, then, I will, Lucy. Look here; if Solomon was such a fool as to
argue with one of you young geese you would shut his mouth in a
minute. There, I am going; but you will always be the slave of one
selfish person or other; you were born for it."
Thus impotently growling, the merchant prince retired from the field,
escorted with amenity by the courtier. In the passage she suddenly
dropped forward like a cypress-tree, and gave him her forehead to
kiss. He kissed it with some little warmth, and confided to her, in
friendly accents, that she was a fool, and off he went, grumbling
inarticulately, to his foreign loans and things.
The courtier returned to smooth her aunt in turn, but that lady
stopped her with a lofty gesture.
"My plan is to look on these monstrosities as horrid dreams, and go on
as if nothing had happened."
Happy philosophy.
Lucy acquiesced with a smile, and in an instant both immortal souls
plunged and disappeared in silk, satin, feathers and point lace.
The afternoon post brought letters that furnished some excitement. Mr.
Hardie announced his return, and Captain Kenealy accepted an
invitation that had been sent to him two days before. But this was not
all. Mrs. Bazalgette, with something between a laugh and a crow,
handed Lucy a letter from Mr. Fountain, in which that diplomatic
gentleman availed himself of her kind invitation, and with elephantine
playfulness proposed, as he could not stay a month with her, to be
permitted to bring a friend with him for a fortnight.
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