I admitted the questionableness of the proceeding.
“Well, I could not get out of the confounded christening--thanks to you, Butterfield,--but as to Mrs. Gervase, that was another matter. I can help that. And she’s a good little woman, too,” he added, “if she were not so infernally modest, by Gad.”
“I think it is, perhaps, better, Coke,” I replied.
I don’t quite know how Mrs. Loring came to pick the Gibsons up. They were not what Carrie termed “quite nice people”; in what respect it was easy to see and difficult to say. Their jewellery was unexceptionable, and barely ostentatious; their manners passed the presentation standard, if falling a little short in the nicer requirements of the _tête-à-tête_. They did not offend in the matter of “Mr.” and “Esq.,” but sniffed somewhat of “R. S. V. P.” Mrs. Gibson, too, insisted on the forms of chaperonage in a way that was rather more than a passing bow to custom, and which suggested the possibility of her having learned the necessity in a different school from that of Mrs. Loring Chatterton. They had money.
“What do you think of the Gibsons, Rol?” Carrie had said to me; “_I_ don’t like them.”
“I would rather introduce them to my relatives than to my friends,” I replied.
It was pretty evident to me after a short acquaintance with the Gibsons that they were disposed to make much of me. Carrie noticed the same thing, and spoke her mind on the subject with the freedom of engaged youth.
“Mrs. Gibson’s a horrid woman, Rol, and it’s my opinion she wants you to marry Miss Gibson.”
“Caroline,” I replied, “I applaud your concern, yet cannot blame Mrs. Gibson. She can see virtue where others see but corpulence. Besides, I consider Miss Gibson rather pretty.”
“I’m sure she’s not pretty,” retorted Caroline, and proceeded to enlighten me on matters interesting and feminine.
Mamma played the only game she knew very skilfully. Her only mistake was in the inapplicability of the means, which was not her fault. Indeed, I feel almost apologetically responsible myself, seeing the line worked so thoroughly, and mused instructively on the devotion of a mother to her child’s prospects.
Miss Gibson was accomplished, and expensively finished. As I had remarked to Carrie, she was decidedly pretty, and would talk Ibsen to you with her face in profile. She displayed an obtrusive girlhood that was not always as modest as its intention, and this pose of maidenhood in bud was apparently the one designed to net me.