"Well, never mind." Ida tapped her white teeth with the pencil she was using, and cast her eyes over the list of guests. "Can you suggest four gentlemen, Arthur?"
"There are two who would certainly come, and whose names you have unaccountably omitted."
Miss Hest raised her strongly marked eyebrows. "Why unaccountably?"
"I am thinking of Colonel Towton and Mr. Maunders."
"There," said Frances, turning gravely to her friend, "I told you everyone would notice that you had left them out."
"Am I supposed to be everyone?" asked Vernon, smiling again. "But why have you left Maunders and Towton out, may I ask? I thought they were such friends."
Ida sat down and coloured through her fair skin. "I wished to ask Conny Maunders, but my father won't hear of it. Why, I don't know."
Vernon reflected that he knew very well, since Dimsdale objected to Maunders paying undue attentions to his daughter. But he kept this knowledge to himself, and inquired about Colonel Towton. "Your father and he are such great friends."
"Of course," said Ida petulantly, "and as they've both been in the East and are both of an age, they should be friends."
"There's a difference between forty-five and sixty odd, dear," said Frances mildly.
"And between twenty-three and forty-five," retorted Miss Dimsdale, whose cheeks were growing even more scarlet. "And Colonel Towton is such a nuisance. He's always--don't laugh, Arthur."
"I beg your pardon, but I guessed what you were about to say," said Vernon with mock gravity. "But why do you object to Colonel Towton, who does not look more than thirty and who is a distinguished soldier, to say nothing of his being well-off and handsome."
"I don't know that he is so very well off," retorted Ida, defending herself; "he has only that old place in Yorkshire."
"I know," nodded Frances wisely, "it's a Grange at Bowderstyke, three miles from my brother's place. Colonel Towton is of a very old family, and I know for a fact that he has at least one thousand a year. You might do worse, Ida."
"I don't wish to marry money," said Ida in vexed tones; "and I don't love Colonel Towton, who is old enough to be my father."
"He is worth a dozen of Maunders," put in Vernon pointedly.
Ida stamped. "You take the privilege of our friendship to be rude and presuming," she said angrily. "My private affairs have nothing to do with you."