“I will not answer any more questions,”
reply I, recovering both hands with a sudden snatch:
“and if you ask me any more, I will not take
you out walking! there!” So I make off, laughing.
“A peck of March dust is worth a king’s
ransom,” say I slowly next morning, as I stand
by the window, trying to see clearly through the dimmed
and tearful pane. “The king would have to
do without his ransom to-day.”
It is raining mightily: strong, straight,
earnest rain, that harshly lashes the meek earth,
that sends angry runlets down the gravel walks, that
muddies the gold goblets of the closed crocuses.
“And you without your walk!” says Barbara,
lifting her face from her stitching. “Poor
Miss Nancy!”
“There is not enough blue sky to make a cat
a pair of breeches!” cries Bobby, despondently,
and with his usual vulgarity.
Sometimes I am tempted to fear that Bobby is hopelessly
ungenteel— ungenteel for life. He
has now taken possession of another window, and is
consulting the eastern sky.
“A ransomless king, and a trouserless cat!
That is about the state of the case!” say I,
turning away from the window with a grin.
After all, now I come to think of it, I am nearly
as vulgar as Bobby. But I am right. Through
the day, through the long, light, cold evening, the
posture of the weather changes not. To-day, Barbara,
Algy, and I, are all constrained to dine; for have
not we a dinner-party, or rather a mild simulation
of one?—a squire or two, a squiress or two,
a curate or two—such odd-come-shorts as
can be got together in a scattered country neighborhood
at briefest notice. Barbara and I, as it happens,
are both late. It is five minutes past eight,
when with the minor details of our toilets a good
deal slurred, with a paucity of bracelets and lack
of necessary pins, we hurriedly and sneakingly enter
the drawing-room, and find all our guests already
come together. Mother gives us an almost imperceptible
glance of gentle reproach, but father is so occupied
in bantering a strange miss—banter in which
the gallant and the fatherly happily join to make
that manner which is the envy and admiration of the
neighborhood—that he seems unconscious of
our entrance. An intuition, however, tells us
that this is not the case, but that he is making a
note of it. This depresses us so much that, until
song and sherry have comforted and emboldened us,
we have not spirits to make any effort toward the
entertainment of our neighbors. We have been paired
with a couple of curates. Mine is a strong-handed,
ingenuous Ishmael, who tells everybody that he hates
his trade, and that he thinks it is very hard that
he may not get out of it, now that his elder brother
is dead. I am thankful to say that his appetite
is as vast as his shoulders; so, after I have told
him that I love raw oysters, and that Barbara
cannot sit in the room with a roast hare; and have
