Although our breakfast hour was late, mamma was hardly ever down to it, and I not always. But one day when we did happen to be all three at breakfast together, he put down his newspaper with a rustle on his knee, and said to mamma, "I have been intending to ask you this long time, and I haven't had an opportunity--or at least it has gone out of my head when I might have asked; have you been writing lately to Lady Lorrimer?"
"Yes, I--at least, I heard from her, a little more than a week ago--a very kind letter--she wrote from Naples--she has been there for the winter."
"Complaining a little, as usual; but I suppose she is really quite well."
"I wish she did not hate me quite so much as she does," said papa. "I'd write to her myself--I dare say you haven't answered her letter?"
"Well, really, you know, just now it is not easy to find time," mamma began.
"Oh! hang it, time! Why, you forget you have really nothing to do," answered papa, more tartly than I had ever heard him speak to mamma before. "You don't answer her letters, I think; at least not for months after you get them! I don't wish you to flatter her--I wish that as little as you do--but I think you might be civil--where's the good of irritating her?"
"I never said I saw any," answered mamma, a little high.
"No; but I see the mischief of it," he continued; "it's utter folly--and it's not right, besides. You'll just lose her, that'll be the end of it--she is the only one of your relations who really cares anything about you--and she intends making Ethel a present--diamonds--it is just, I do believe, that she wishes to show what she intends further. You are the person she would naturally like to succeed her in anything she has to leave; and you take such a time about answering her letters, you seem to wish to vex her. You'll succeed at last--and, I can tell you, you can't afford to throw away friendship just now. I shall want every friend, I mean every real friend, I can count upon. More than you think depends on this affair. If I'm returned for Shillingsworth, I'm quite certain I shall get something very soon--and if I once get it, depend upon it, I shall get on. Some people would say I'm a fool for my pains, but it is money very well spent--it is the only money, I really think, I ever laid out wisely in my life, and it is a very serious matter our succeeding in this. Did not your aunt Lorrimer say that she thought she would be at Golden Friars again this year?"