The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [73]
Pamela and Lady Dysart exchanged glances as they laughed at this reminiscence. Would Christopher ever talk to a girl with a voice like this? was the interpretation of Pamela’s glance, while Lady Dysart’s was a mere note of admiration for the way that the sunlight caught the curls on Francie’s forehead as she sat up to speak to Christopher, and for the colour that had risen in her cheeks since his arrival, more especially since his announcement that Captain Cursiter and Mr. Hawkins were coming to dinner. There are few women who can avoid some slight change of manner and even of appearance, when a man is added to the company, and it may at once be said that Francie was far from trying to repress her increased interest on such an occasion.
“What made you think I could act, Mr. Dysart?” she said, looking at him a little self-consciously; “do you think I look like an actress?”
The question was interrupted by a cry from the chestnut tree, and Miss Hope-Drummond’s voice was heard appealing to someone to come and help her out of the hammock.
“She can get out jolly well by herself,” remarked Garry, but Christopher got up and lounged across the grass in response to the summons, and Francie’s question remained unanswered. Lady Dysart rose too, and watched her son helping Miss Hope-Drummond on to her feet, and strolling away with her in the direction of the shrubbery. Then she turned to Francie.
“Now, Miss Fitzpatrick, you shall come and explain that Dorcas Society sleeve to me, and I should not be surprised if you could help me with the acrostic.”
Lady Dysart considered herself to be, before all things, a diplomatist.
* * *
CHAPTER XIX.
Dinner was over. Gorman was regaling his fellows in the servants’ hall with an account of how Miss Fitzpatrick had eaten her curry with a knife and fork, and her Scotch woodcock with a spoon, and how she had accepted every variety of wine that he had offered her, and taken only a mouthful of each, an eccentricity of which William was even now reaping the benefit in the pantry. Mrs. Brady, the cook, dared say that by all accounts it was the first time the poor child had seen a bit served the way it would be fit to put into a Christian’s mouth, and, indeed, it was little she’d learn of behaviour or dinners from Miss Mullen, except to make up messes for them dirty cats—a remark which obtained great acceptance from her audience. Mr. Gorman then gave it as his opinion that Miss Fitzpatrick was as fine a girl as you’d meet between this and Dublin, and if he was Mr. Christopher, he’d prefer her to Miss Hope-Drummond, even though the latter might be hung down with diamonds.
The object of this criticism was meantime congratulating herself that she had accomplished the last and most dreaded of the day’s ceremonies, and, so far as she knew, had won through it without disaster. She certainly felt as if she never had eaten so much in her life, and she thought to herself that, taking into consideration the mental anxiety and the loss of time involved in the consumption of one of these grand dinners, she infinitely preferred the tea and poached eggs which formed her ordinary repast. Pamela was at the piano, looking a long way off in the dim pink light of the shaded room, and was playing such strange music as Francie had never heard before, and secretly hoped never to hear again. She had always believed herself to be extremely fond of music, and was wont to feel very sentimental when she and one of that tribe, whom it is to be feared she spoke of as her “fellows,” sat on the rocks at the back of Kingstown pier and listened to the band playing “Dorothy,” or “The Lost Chord,” in the dark of the summer evening; but these minor murmurings, that seemed to pass by steep and painful chromatic paths from one woe to another, were to her merely exercises of varying difficulty and ugliness, in which Miss Dysart never seemed to get the chords quite right. She was too shy to get up and search for amusement among the books and