The following week I was sent up to The Hall with Roy and grandmamma’s card to return the visit.  They were at home, unfortunately, and I had to leave my dear companion lying on the steps to wait for me.  Such a fearful house!  An enormous stained-glass window in the hall, the shape of a church window, only not with saints and angels in it; more like the pattern of a kaleidoscope that one peeps into with one eye, and then bunches of roses and silly daisies in some of the panes, which, I am sure, are unsuitable to a stained-glass window.  There were ugly negro figures from Venice, holding plates, in the passage, and stuffed bears for lamps, and such a look of newness about everything!  I was taken along to Mrs. Gurrage’s “budwar,” as she called it.  That was a room to remember!  It had a “suite” in it like the one at the cottage, only with Louis XV. legs and Louis XVI. backs, and a general expression of distortion, and all of the newest gilt-and-crimson satin brocade.  And under a glass case in the corner was the top of a wedding-cake and a bunch of orange blossoms.

I was kept waiting about ten minutes, and then Mrs. Gurrage bustled in, fastening her cuff.  I can’t put down all she said, but it was one continual praise of “Gussie” and his wealth and the jewels he had given her, and how disappointed he would be not to see me.  Miss Hoad poured out the tea and giggled twice.  I think she must be what Hephzibah calls “wanting.”  At last I got away.  Roy barked with pleasure as we started homeward.

We had not gone a hundred yards before we met Mr. Gurrage coming up the drive.  He insisted upon turning back and walking with me.  He said it was “beastly hard luck”—­he has horrid phrases—­his being out when I came, and would I please not to walk so fast, as we should so soon arrive at the cottage, and he wanted to talk to me.  I simply pranced on after that.  I do not know why people should want to talk to one when one does not want to talk to them.  I was not agreeable, but he did all the speaking.  He told me he belonged to the Yeomanry and they were “jolly fellows” and were going to give a ball soon at Tilchester—­the county town nearest here—­and that I must let his mother take me to it.  It was to be a send-off to the detachment which had volunteered for South Africa.

A ball!  Oh!  I should like to go to a ball.  What could it feel like, I wonder, to have on a white tulle dress and to dance all the evening.  Would grandmamma ever let me?  Oh! it made my heart beat.  But suddenly a cold dash came—­I could not go with a person like Mrs. Gurrage.  I would rather stay at home than that.  When we got to the gate I said good-bye and gave him two fingers, but he was not the least daunted, and, seizing all my hand, said: 

“Now, don’t send me away; I want to come in and see your grandmother.”

There was nothing left for me to do, and he followed me into the house and into the drawing-room.