"Poor Aunt!" says Doris. "Take off your cap and I'll have the other ready in a minute." And the naughty girl winks at Honor as she turns away to look for it.
Molly, however, too tired for jokes, is before her, and is already standing by her aunt with the night-cap in her hands.
"That's a good girl," says Lady Woodhouse, drawing her face down and kissing it. "And now be off, all of you. You have already lost several hours of beauty-sleep, and you will be looking as haggard as old women to-morrow!" And kissing them all affectionately, she dismisses her three maids for the night, or more correctly speaking, morning.
Breakfast is considerably later than usual the next morning, in consequence of the gaieties of the previous night. Mrs. Merivale has therefore made an effort to be present on this occasion in order to hear full accounts of the ball.
Lady Woodhouse has now somewhat recovered from her fatigue, but the girls all look pale and heavy-eyed, being altogether unaccustomed to such late hours. Molly sits in a hopeless state of yawning, hardly eating any breakfast, and leaving all the others to do the talking, only throwing in a word here and there. Doris has been scolding her mother for her part in what she calls the _trick_ played upon her as to the real position of her _fiancé_, and Mrs. Merivale has more than once been obliged to appeal laughingly to her sister for support in what she holds out as her _reasons_ against her daughter's arguments.
That young lady at length clinches the matter by emphatically declaring it to be all "fudge," whatever that may be, and that she is quite surprised at Lancelot having behaved so badly.
"Yes," presently remarks Lady Woodhouse, chipping the top off an egg, "I will say this for your girls, Mary,--a more lady-like, refined trio you could not see. If they were not here," she continues with an inconsistency worthy of the Emerald Isle itself, "I should go on to say what is perfectly true, that they were the admiration of the greater part of the guests, and the envy of the rest. Why, if their programmes had been as long as my arm, they could have filled them over and over. O, yes, I certainly feel well repaid for those long, weary hours of sitting there, pretending I liked it, when I would _far_ rather have been in my bed. Well, as I said before, the girls do you credit, Mary. You and that excellent Miss Denison that was; you would have brought them up to be refined even had they had to go out charing. Good gracious! here's that cat of yours playing with my shoe-strings. Take him away, Molly, do! And now, Doris, what is this you are telling us about Sir Edward? If he wants you to marry him in three weeks' time instead of several months, why in the world shouldn't you do so?"