“I can tell you the size of the room, if that is all you want,” said Dr. Marjoribanks. “I suppose you mean to give parties, and drive me out of my senses with dancing and singing.—No, Lucilla, you must wait till you get married—that will never do for me.”
“Dear papa,” said Lucilla sweetly, “it is so dreadful to hear you say parties. Everybody knows that the only thing I care for in life is to be a comfort to you; and as for dancing, I saw at once that was out of the question. Dancing is all very well,” said Miss Marjoribanks thoughtfully; “but it implies quantities of young people—and young people can never make what I call society. It is Evenings I mean to have, papa. I am sure you want to go downstairs, and I suppose Tom would think it civil to sit with me, though he is tired; so I will show you a good example, and Thomas can pick up the table and the flowers at his leisure. Good night, papa,” said Lucilla, giving him her round fresh cheek to kiss. She went out of the room with a certain triumph, feeling that she had fully signified her intentions, which is always an important matter; and shook hands in a condescending way with Tom, who had broken his shins in a headlong rush to open the door. She looked at him with an expression of mild despair, and shook her head again as she accorded him that sign of amity. “If you only would look a little where you are going,” said Miss Marjoribanks;—perhaps she meant the words to convey an allegorical as well as a positive meaning, as so many people have been found out to do—and then she pursued her peaceful way upstairs. As for the Doctor, he went off to his library rubbing his hands, glad to be released, and laughing softly at his nephew’s abashed looks. “She knows how to put him down at least,” the Doctor said to himself, well pleased; and he was so much amused by his daughter’s superiority to the vulgar festivity of parties, that he almost gave in to the idea of refurnishing the drawing-room to suit Lucilla’s complexion. He rubbed his hands once more over the fire, and indulged in a little laugh all by himself over that original idea. “So it is Evenings she means to have?” said the Doctor; and, to be sure, nothing could be more faded than the curtains, and there were bits of the carpet in which the pattern was scarcely discernible. So that, on the whole, up to this point there seemed to be a reasonable prospect that Lucilla would have everything her own way.
VII
Miss Marjoribanks had so many things to think of next morning that she found her cousin, who was rather difficult to get rid of, much in her way: naturally the young man was briefless, and came on circuit for the name of the thing, and was quite disposed to dawdle the first morning, and attach himself to the active footsteps of Lucilla; and for her part, she had things to occupy her so very much more important. For one thing, one of Dr. Marjoribanks’s little dinner-parties was to take place that evening, which would be the first under the new regime, and was naturally a matter of some anxiety to all parties. “I shall go down and ask Mrs. Chiley to come with the Colonel,” said Lucilla. “I have always meant to do that. We can’t have a full dinner-party, you know, as long as the house is so shabby; but I am sure Mrs. Chiley will come to take care of me.”
“To take care of you!—in your father’s house! Do you think they’ll bite?” said the Doctor grimly; but as for Lucilla, she was quite prepared for that.
“I must have a chaperone, you know,” she said. “I don’t say it is not quite absurd; but then, at first, I always make it a point to give in to the prejudices of society. That is how I have always been so successful,” said the experienced Lucilla. “I never went in the face of anybody’s prejudices. Afterwards, you know, when one is known—”
The Doctor laughed, but at the same time he sighed. There was nothing to be said against Mrs. Chiley, who had, on the whole, as women go, a very superior training, and knew what a good dinner was; but it was the beginning of the revolution of which Dr. Marjoribanks, vaguely oppressed with the idea of new paper, new curtains, and all that was involved in the entrance of Mr. Holden the upholsterer into the house, did not see the end. He acquiesced, of course, since there was nothing else for it: but it must be confessed that the spectre of Mrs. Chiley sitting at his right hand clouded over for the Doctor the pleasant anticipation of the evening. If it had been possible to put her at the head of the table beside Lucilla, whom she was to come to take care of, he could have borne it better—and to be sure it would have been a great deal more reasonable; but then that was absolutely out of the question, and the Doctor gave in with a sigh. Thus it was that he began to realise the more serious result of that semi-abdication into which he had been beguiled. The female element, so long peacefully ignored and kept at a distance, had come in again in triumph and taken possession, and the Doctor knew too well by the experience of a long life what a restless and troublesome element it was. He had begun to feel that it had ceased to be precisely amusing as he took his place in his brougham. It was good sport to see Lucilla make an
