“I was not thoughtless, mamma; forgive me for answering back,” said Phoebe, very meekly; and she showed no signs of sulkiness, though Clarence was carried off and kept from approaching her again.
Unfortunately, however, when Clarence was removed from Phoebe, he fell into still greater peril. The eldest Miss Dorset and her mother, both of them with equally benevolent intentions, introduced him simultaneously to Ursula May. “The poor little girl has not danced once,” Mrs. Copperhead, who had recollections of standing by herself for a whole evening, unnoticed, whispered in his ear, and Miss Dorset spoke to him still more plainly. “We brought her,” she said, “but I cannot get her partners, for I don’t know anybody.” And what could Clarence do but offer himself? And Ursula, too, was a good dancer, and very pretty—far prettier than Phoebe.
“Confound him! there he is now forever with that girl in white,” said his father to himself, with great rage. Dozens of good partners in pink and blue were going about the room. What did the boy mean by bestowing himself upon the two poor ones, the black and the white. This disturbed Mr. Copperhead’s enjoyment, as he stood in the doorway of the ballroom, looking round upon all the splendour that was his, and feeling disposed, like Nebuchadnezzar, to call upon everybody to come and worship him. He expanded and swelled out with pride and complacency, as he looked round upon his own greatness, and perceived the effect made upon the beholders. When that effect did not seem sufficiently deep, he called here and there upon a lingerer for applause. “That’s considered a very fine Turner,” he said, taking one of them into a smaller room. “Come along here, you know about that sort of thing—I don’t. I should be ashamed to tell you how much I gave for it; all that money hanging there useless, bringing in nothing! But when I do buy anything I like it to be the very best that is to be had.”
“I’d as soon have a good chromo,” said the person addressed, “which costs a matter of a five-pound note, and enough too, to hang up against a wall. But you can afford it, Copperhead. You’ve the best right of any man I know to be a fool if you like.”
The great man laughed, but he scarcely liked the compliment. “I am a fool if you like,” he said, “the biggest fool going. I like a thing that costs a deal, and is of no use. That’s what I call luxury. My boy, Clarence, and my big picture, they’re dear; but I can afford ’em, if they were double the price.”
“If I were you,” said his friend, “I wouldn’t hang my picture in this little bit of a hole, nor let my boy waste his time with all the riffraff in the room. There’s Smith’s girl and Robinson’s niece, both of them worth a cool hundred thousand; and you leave him to flourish about all over the place with a chit in a white frock, and another in a black one. I call that waste, not luxury, for my part.”
“I don’t want to sell either the boy or the picture,” said the rich man, with a laugh. But nevertheless he was annoyed that his son should be such an ass. Miss Smith and Miss Robinson were as fine as their milliners could make them. The first of these ladies had an emerald locket almost as big as a warming-pan, and Miss Robinson’s pearls were a little fortune in themselves; but the chosen objects of that young idiot’s attentions wore nothing but trumpery twopenny-halfpenny trinkets, and gowns which had been made at home for all Mr. Copperhead knew. Confound him! the father breathed hotly to himself. Thus it will be seen that unmixed pleasure is not to be had in this world, even in the midst of envious friends and the most splendid entertainment which money could supply.
IV
A Country Party
“Very funny, now,” said Sir Robert. “I don’t know that such a thing ever happened to me before. Give you my word for it, I didn’t know a single soul, not one; and there must have been a couple of hundred or so there. Jove! I never thought there were as many people in England that I didn’t know.”
“How could you know Mr. Copperhead’s friends?” said Sophy Dorset. “What I wonder is, that she should have asked us. Not but that it was amusing enough, once in a way, just to see how such people look.”
“They looked very much like other people, my dear. Finer, though. I haven’t seen so many jewels at an evening party for ages. Very much like other people. Fatter, perhaps, the men, but not the women. I notice,” said Sir Robert, who himself was spare, “that City men generally have a tendency to fat.”
“They are so rich,” said Miss Dorset, with gentle disgust.
She was the quiet one, never saying much. Sophy, who was lively, conducted the conversation. They were all seated at breakfast, later than usual, on the morning after the Copperheads’ ball. It was a hazy morning, and the party were seated in a large sitting-room in the “very central” locality of Suffolk Street, looking down that straight little street upon the stream of carriages and omnibuses in the foggy distance. It was not for pleasure that this country party had come to London. Sir Robert’s second son, who was in India, had sent his eldest children home to the care of his father and sisters. They were expected at Portsmouth daily, and the aunts, somewhat excited by the prospect of their charge, had insisted upon coming to town to receive them. As for Ursula May, who was a poor relation on the late Lady Dorset’s side, as Mrs. Copperhead had been
