The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [15]
Lambert did not answer immediately. His eyes rested on her flushed face with just enough expression in them to convey to her that her protest was beside the point. Mrs. Lambert was apparently used to this silent comment on what she said, for she went on still more apologetically:
“If you like, Roderick, I’ll send Michael over early with a note to Charlotte to tell her we’ll go some other day.”
Mr. Lambert leaned back as if to consider the question, and began to fill his pipe for the second time.
“Well,” he said slowly, “if it makes no difference to you, Lucy, I’d be rather glad if you did. As a matter of fact I have to ride out to Gurthnamuckla to-morrow, on business, and I thought I’d take Francie Fitzpatrick with me there on the black mare. She’s no great shakes of a rider, and the black mare is the only thing I’d like to put her on. But, of course, if it was for your own sake and not Charlotte’s that you wanted to go to the Waller’s, I’d try and manage to take Francie some other day. For the matter of that I might put her on Paddy; I daresay he’d carry a lady.”
Mr. Lambert’s concession had precisely the expected effect. Mrs. Lambert gave a cry of consternation.
“Roderick! you wouldn’t! Is it put that girl up on that mad little savage of a pony! Why, it’s only yesterday, when Michael was driving me into town, and Mr. Corkran passed on his tricycle, he tore up on to his hind heels and tried to run into Ryan’s public house! Indeed, if that was the way, not all the Charlottes in the world would make me go driving to-morrow.”
“Oh, all right,” said Lambert graciously; “if you’d rather have it that way, we’ll send a note over to Charlotte.”
“Would you mind—” said Mrs. Lambert hesitatingly. “I mean, don’t you think it would be better if—supposing you wrote the note? She always minds what you say, and, I declare, I don’t know how in the world I’d make up the excuse, when she’d settled the whole thing, and even got me to leave word with the sweep to do her drawing-room chimney that’s thick with jackdaws’ nests, because the family’d be from home all the afternoon.”
“Why, what was to happen to Francie?” asked Lambert quickly.
“I think Charlotte said she was to come with us,” yawned Mrs. Lambert, whose memory for conversation was as feeble as the part she played in it; “they had some talk about it at all events. I wouldn’t be sure but Francie Fitzpatrick said first she’d go for a walk to see the town—yes, so she did, and Charlotte told her what she was going for was to try and see the officers, and Francie said maybe it was, or maybe she’d come and have afternoon tea with you. They had great joking about it, but I’m sure, after all, it was settled she was to come with us. Indeed,” continued Mrs. Lambert meditatively; “I think Charlotte’s quite right not to have her going through the town that way by herself; for, I declare, Roderick, that’s a lovely girl.”
“Oh, she’s well able to take care of herself,” said Lambert, with the gruff deprecation that is with some people the method of showing pleasure at a compliment. “She’s not such a fool as she looks, I can tell you,” he went on, feeling suddenly quite companionable; “the Fitzpatricks didn’t take such wonderful care of her that Charlotte need be bothering herself to put her in cotton wool at this time of day.”
Mrs. Lambert crocheted on in silence for a few moments, inwardly counting her stitches till she came to the end of the row, then she withdrew the needle and scratched her head ruminatingly with it.
“Isn’t it a strange thing, Roderick, what makes Charlotte have anyone staying in the house with her? I never remember such a thing to happen before.”
“She has to have her, and no thanks to her. Old Fitzpatrick’s been doing bad business lately, and the little house he’s had to