A pause followed. The Mayor drew a card from his pocket. It was headed, "To have the honor of meeting H. R. H. the Duke of Mercia." The Mayor laid it on the counter.
"There!" he said. "You must do as you think right, Johnstone. Of course, if you like to go on like this, worryin' the Squire's friends, why, it isn't for you to put your legs under the Squire's ma'ogany. So the Squire says. He says, 'Let him drop that nonsense, and come and be friendly--he may think what he likes.'"
"There'll have been nothin' like it in my day," said the Mayor. "And only me and Susan from the town!"
"There'll be plenty ready to go," said Johnstone.
"Aye, that they will, but they won't have the askin'. Mrs. Delane says there aint a soul she'll have, except me and Susan, and you and Mrs. Johnstone. You see, ma'am, it isn't everyone who can sit down with the county."
The heart of Mrs. Johnstone was alight with pride and exultation and longing. She looked at her husband and she looked at the Mayor.
"You and me and the Recorder 'ud drive up in the coach," said the Mayor, with the air of one who regretfully pictures an impossible ideal; "and the ladies--Mrs. Hedger and you, ma'am--was to follow in a carriage and pair with a postilion--his Lordship 'ud send one for ye."
"I'd wear my ruby velvet," murmured Mrs. Johnstone in the voice of soliloquy, "and my gold earrings."
"Well, I must be goin'," said the Mayor. "It's a cryin' shame you won't come, Johnstone. What's that mad feller Roberts to you?"
"A dirty villain as starves his wife!" ejaculated Mrs. Johnstone, with sudden violence.
"Take a day to think it over," said the Mayor. "Take a day, ma'am;" and he disappeared with a smile on his shrewd, good-tempered face.
There was silence for a moment after he went. The Alderman sat in his chair, glancing at his wife out of the corner of his eye. Mrs. Johnstone gazed fixedly at the shop-window. The Alderman looked at her again: she was, he thought (with much justice), a fine woman; she would look well in the ruby velvet and the gold earrings, and the swells would wonder where old Johnstone picked up that strapping young woman--for she was his junior by twenty years. The Alderman sighed, and looked down again at his poster.