Lady Denville, presently joining the party, bade everyone good-morning; hoped, in her pretty, solicitous way, that her sister-in-law had slept well; and said, as she took her seat at the table: ‘Dearest Cressy! This afternoon we must have a delightful cose together, you and I!’
As the sparkling glance that accompanied these words was as eloquent as it was mischievous, Kit intervened, asking, with all the heartiness of a host bent on arranging every detail of the day, what his guests would like to do that morning.
Attention was certainly drawn away from Lady Denville, but the responses Kit received must have disappointed such a host as he was trying to impersonate. But as his only desire was to snatch a private interview with Cressy, he was very well satisfied with them. His cousin said moodily that he didn’t know; Cosmo, whom the humdrum pattern of an ordinary day in a country house exactly suited, said that he would read, and write letters until the post came in; Cressy, who was having much ado not to laugh, kept her eyes lowered, and did not attempt to speak; and Mrs Cliffe, who was anxiously watching her son, returned no answer, but suddenly declared that Ambrose might say what he chose but she was persuaded that he had a boil forming on his neck. All eyes turned involuntarily towards Ambrose, who reddened, shot a glowering look at his mama, and said angrily that it was no such thing. He added that he had the headache.
‘Poor boy!’ said Lady Denville, smiling kindly upon him. ‘I daresay if you were to go for a walk it would soon leave you.’
‘Amabel, I must beg you not to encourage Ambrose to expose himself!’ said Mrs Cliffe. ‘There is a wind blowing, and I am positive it is easterly, for I myself have a touch of the tic, which I never get but when there is an east wind! It would be fatal for Ambrose to stir out of doors when he is already not quite the thing, for with his constitution, you know, any disorder is very likely to lay him up for a fortnight!’
‘Is it?’ said Lady Denville, gazing at her nephew with the awed interest of one confronted with some rare exhibit. ‘Poor boy, how awkward it must be for you, to be obliged to remain indoors whenever the wind is in the east! Because, so often it is!’
‘Well, well, we need not make mountains out of molehills!’ said Cosmo testily. ‘I don’t deny that his constitution is sickly, but –’
‘Nonsense, Cosmo, how can you talk so?’ exclaimed his sister. ‘I’m sure he isn’t sickly, even if he has got a little headache!’ She smiled encouragingly at Ambrose, sublimely unconscious of having offended all three Cliffes: Ambrose, because, however much he might dislike having an incipient boil pointed out, he was proud of his headaches, which often earned for him a great deal of attention; Cosmo, because he had for some years subscribed to his wife’s view of the matter, finding in Ambrose’s delicacy an excuse for his sad want of interest in any manly sport; and Emma, because she regarded any suggestion that her only child was not in a deplorable state of debility as little short of an insult.
‘I fear,’ said Cosmo, ‘that Ambrose has never enjoyed his cousins’ robust health.’
‘Your sister cannot be expected to understand delicate constitutions, my dear,’ said Emma. ‘I daresay the twins never suffered a day’s illness in their lives!’
‘No, I don’t think they did,’ replied Lady Denville, with a touch of pride. ‘They were the stoutest couple! Of course, they did have things like measles and whooping-cough, but I can’t recall that they were ever ill. In fact, when they had whooping-cough, one of them – was it you, dearest? – climbed up the chimney after a starling’s nest!’
‘No, that was Kit,’ said Mr Fancot.
‘So it was!’ she agreed, twinkling at him.
‘But how terrible!’ exclaimed Emma.
‘Yes, wasn’t it? He came down looking exactly like a blackamoor, and brought so much soot down with him that everything in the room seemed to be covered with it. I don’t think I ever laughed so much in my life!’
‘Laughed?’ gasped Emma. ‘Laughed when one of your children was in danger of falling, and breaking his neck?’
‘Well, I don’t think he could have done that, though I suppose he might have broken his legs, or got stuck in the chimney. I do remember wondering how we were to get him out if he did stick tight. However, it would have been a great waste of time to get?into a worry about the twins, because they were forever falling out of trees, or into the lake, or off their ponies, and nothing dreadful ever happened to them,’ said Lady Denville serenely.
Mrs Cliffe could only shudder at such callous unconcern; while Ambrose, quite mistakenly supposing that these reflections were directed at his own, less adventurous, career, fell into obvious sulks.
Lady Denville, having disposed of the tea and bread-and-butter which constituted her breakfast, then excused herself, saying, as she got up from the table: ‘Now I must leave you, because Nurse Pinner seems not to be very well, and it would be too unkind in me not to visit her, and perhaps take her something to tempt her appetite.’
‘Some fruit!’ said Kit hastily.
She gave a little chuckle, and said, i
rrepressible mischief in her voice: ‘Yes, dearest! Not quails!’
‘Quails!’ ejaculated Cosmo, shocked beyond measure. ‘Quails for your old nurse, Amabel?’
‘No, Evelyn thinks some fruit would be better.’
‘I should have thought that some arrowroot, or a supporting broth would have been more suitable!’ said Emma.
That set her incorrigible sister-in-law’s eyes dancing wickedly. ‘Oh, no, I assure you it wouldn’t be! Particularly not the arrowroot, which – which she abominates! Dear Emma, how uncivil it is in me to run away, as I must! But I am persuaded you must understand how it is!’ Her lovely smile embraced her seething younger son. ‘Dearest, I leave our guests in your hands! Oh, and I think a bottle of port, don’t you? So much more supporting than mutton-broth! So will you, if you please, –’
‘Don’t tease yourself, Mama!’ he interrupted, holding open the door for her. ‘I’ll attend to that!’
‘To be sure, I might have known you would!’ she said, wholly unaffected by the quelling look she received from him. ‘You will know just what will be most acceptable!’
‘I sometimes wonder!’ said Cosmo, in accents of the deepest disapproval, as Kit shut the door behind her ladyship, ‘whether your mother has taken entire leave of her senses, Denville!’
Mr Fancot might be incensed by his wayward parent’s behaviour, but no more than the mildest criticism was needed to make him show hackle. ‘Do you, sir?’ he said, dangerously affable. ‘Then it affords me great pleasure to be able to reassure you!’