But I wanted to have you for half-an-hour to myself before dinner, so that I might look at you, and make up my mind about Flo's choice. I hope you won't be angry with me?"
"And how have you made up your mind?"
"If you want to find that out, you must get it through Florence. You may be quite sure I shall tell her; and, I suppose, I may be quite sure she will tell you. Does she tell you everything?"
"I tell her everything," said Harry, feeling himself, however, to be a little conscience-smitten at the moment, as he remembered his interview with Lady Ongar. Things had occurred this very day which he certainly could not tell her.
"Do;—do; always do that," said Mrs. Burton, laying her hand affectionately on his arm. "There is no way so certain to bind a woman to you, heart and soul, as to show her that you trust her in everything. Theodore tells me everything. I don't think there's a drain planned under a railway-bank, but that he shows it me in some way; and I feel so grateful for it. It makes me know that I can never do enough for him. I hope you'll be as good to Flo as he is to me."
"We can't both be perfect, you know."
"Ah, well! of course you'll laugh at me. Theodore always laughs at me when I get on what he calls a high horse. I wonder whether you are as sensible as he is?"
Harry reflected that he never wore cotton gloves. "I don't think I am very sensible," said he. "I do a great many foolish things, and the worst is, that I like them."
"So do I. I like so many foolish things."
"Oh, mamma!" said Cissy.
"I shall have that quoted against me, now, for the next six months, whenever I am preaching wisdom in the nursery. But Florence is nearly as sensible as her brother."
"Much more so than I am."
"All the Burtons are full up to their eyes with good sense. And what a good thing it is! Who ever heard of any of them coming to sorrow? Whatever they have to live on, they always have enough. Did you ever know a woman who has done better with her children, or has known how to do better, than Theodore's mother? She is the dearest old woman." Harry had heard her called a very clever old woman by certain persons in Stratton, and could not but think of her matrimonial successes as her praises were thus sung by her daughter-in-law.
They went on talking, while Sophy sat in Harry's lap, till there was heard the sound of the key in the latch of the front-door, and the master of the house was known to be there. "It's Theodore," said his wife, jumping up and going out to meet him. "I'm so glad that you have been here a little before him, because now I feel that I know you. When he's here I shan't get in a word." Then she went down to her husband, and Harry was left to speculate how so very charming a woman could ever have been brought to love a man who cleaned his boots with his pocket-handkerchief.
There were soon steps again upon the stairs, and Burton returned bringing with him another man whom he introduced to Harry as Mr. Jones. "I didn't know my brother was coming," said Mrs. Burton, "but it will be very pleasant, as of course I shall want you to know him." Harry became a little perplexed. How far might these family ramifications be supposed to go? Would he be welcomed, as one of the household, to the hearth of Mrs. Jones; and if of Mrs. Jones, then of Mrs. Jones's brother? His mental inquiries, however, in this direction, were soon ended by his finding that Mr. Jones was a bachelor.
Jones, it appeared, was the editor, or sub-editor, or co-editor, of some influential daily newspaper. "He is a night bird, Harry—," said Mrs. Burton. She had fallen into the way of calling him Harry at once, but he could not on that occasion bring himself to call her Cecilia. He might have done so had not her husband been present, but he was ashamed to do it before him. "He is a night bird, Harry," said she, speaking of her brother, "and flies away at nine o'clock, that he may go and hoot like an owl in some dark city haunt that he has. Then, when he is himself asleep at breakfast-time, his hootings are being heard round the town."
Harry rather liked the idea of knowing an editor. Editors were, he thought, influential people, who had the world very much under their feet—being, as he conceived, afraid of no men, while other men are very much afraid of them. He was glad enough to shake Jones by the hand, when he found that Jones was an editor. But Jones, though he had the face and forehead of a clever man, was very quiet, and seemed almost submissive to his sister and brother-in-law.
The dinner was plain, but good, and Harry after a while became happy and satisfied, although he had come to the house with something almost like a resolution to find fault. Men, and women also, do frequently go about in such a mood, having unconscionably from some small circumstance, prejudged their acquaintances, and made up their mind that their acquaintances should be condemned. Influenced in this way, Harry had not intended to pass a pleasant evening, and would have stood aloof and been cold, had it been possible to him; but he found that it was not possible; and after a little while he was friendly and joyous, and the dinner went off very well. There was some wild-fowl, and he was agreeably surprised as he watched the mental anxiety and gastronomic skill with which Burton went through the process of preparing the gravy, with lemon and pepper, having in the room a little silver-pot and an apparatus of fire for the occasion. He would as soon have expected the Archbishop of Canterbury himself to go through such an operation in the dining-room at Lambeth as the hard-working man of business whom he had known in the chambers at the Adelphi.
"Does he always do that, Mrs. Burton?" Harry asked.
"Always," said Burton, "when I can get the materials. One doesn't bother oneself about a cold leg of mutton, you know, which is my usual dinner when we are alone. The children have it hot in the middle of the day."
"Such a thing never happened to him yet, Harry," said Mrs. Burton.
"Gently with the pepper," said the editor. It was the first word he had spoken for some time.
"Be good enough to remember that, yourself, when you are writing your article to-night."
"No, none for me, Theodore," said Mrs. Burton.
"Cissy!"
"I have dined really. If I had remembered that you were going to display your cookery, I would have kept some of my energy, but I forgot it."
"As a rule," said Burton, "I don't think women recognize any difference in flavours. I believe wild duck and hashed mutton would be quite the same to my wife if her eyes were blinded. I should not mind this, if it were not that they are generally proud of the deficiency. They think it grand."
"Just as men think it grand not to know one tune from another," said his wife.
When dinner was over, Burton got up from his seat. "Harry," said he, "do you like good wine?" Harry said that he did. Whatever women may say about wild-fowl, men never profess an indifference to good wine, although there is a theory about the world, quite as incorrect as it is general, that they have given up drinking it. "Indeed, I do," said Harry. "Then I'll give you a bottle of port," said Burton, and so saying he left the room.
"I'm very glad you have come to-day," said Jones, with much gravity. "He never gives me any of that when I'm alone with him; and he never, by any means, brings it out for company."
"You don't mean to accuse him of drinking it alone, Tom?" said his sister, laughing.
"I don't know when he drinks it; I only know when he doesn't."
The wine was decanted with as much care as had been given to the concoction of the gravy, and the clearness
