“I’ll tell you what, Susie,” said Fred, who had just come in; “I’ll ride over to-morrow morning first thing and ask them to ask you. I dare say they will for my sake.”
Susie looked at him for a moment with a flush of hope, and then her face clouded. “For your sake!” she said, with a sister’s frank contempt. “If it’s only for your sake, I’ll stay at home. I am not a nobody like that. I’m Lucy Scrymgeour’s oldest friend. If she doesn’t of her own account--and Davie too,” cried the girl with an access of indignation--“it’s more than any one can bear!”
“I would never speak to one of them again,” said Alice, “if it was me.”
“And what good would that do?” cried Susie, with the tear still in her eye, turning upon her sister. “Lose the ball and a friend too! I suppose they had some reason. Perhaps there were too many girls already--else why should they ask Fred? Or, perhaps---- Yes, I’ll speak to Lucy again, the first time I see her; but I shall be very dignified, and pretend that I didn’t care a bit.”
“But you couldn’t if you tried; dignified, my dear--that would be rather difficult.”
“Is there anything in the paper, Pat?” said Mr. Dalyell.
“Not much. But it’s ill talking between a full man and a fasting. I’ve seen what there is, and you’ve not. Here’s the _Times_. Munro’s in for that place in the North.”
“Bless my soul! and you call that nothing? Another firebrand, and as good as two lost in our majority. That’s bad, Pat; that’s bad.”
“I never think anything of a bye-election. They’re all in the nature of accidents. There’s a good speech of Gladstone’s at one of the Lancaster towns, and John Bright flaming on the side of peace like a house on fire.”
“And he says there’s nothing in the paper!” said Mr. Dalyell, as he dropped into an easy-chair in his turn with the great broad-sheet of the _Times_ in his hand.
“When gentlemen begin talking politics,” said Mrs. Dalyell, “I always think it is time for the ladies to retire. But you have begun early to-night. Are you going into town at your usual hour to-morrow, Robert? I hope you’ll be home early, for, with Fred away, there will be no man but only the servants in the house.”
“And what the worse will you be for that, Amelia? There are plenty to protect you, I hope, if I were never to be seen again.”