Such was the feminine portion of the house-party at Redwold Towers, and it was to this party that John Vansittart had succeeded in making himself eminently agreeable. He had admired the artistic shading and Tudoresque scroll-work of Mrs. Baddington’s counterpane, and had surprised that lady by what seemed a profound knowledge of early Florentine needlework. He had tramped Blackdown in the wind and the weather with the Miss Champernownes, turn and turn about, and was no nearer falling in love with any of the three than when he began these rambles; he had discussed the art of dressing well upon fifty pounds a year with Miss Green, and had allowed her to convince him that the Greens of Peddlington were a purer race than the Plantagenets; and today he had given himself up to idleness in the gynaeceum, otherwise morning-room, and had offered himself for two round dances apiece to the four young ladies, at the hunt ball in the little rustic town, to which they were all going that evening.
“It will be an awful drive,” said Maud Hartley; “think what the hills will be like in this weather.”
There had been an “old-fashioned Christmas,” and the world outside the windows was for the most part a white world.
“The horses have been roughed, and your coachman tells me he has no fear of the hills,” said Vansittart. “He is going to take four horses.”
“I’m sure they’ll be wanted, poor things, with that big omnibus and a herd of us to drag up those terrible hills,” said his sister.
“If you have any feeling for the brute creation you can get out and walk up the hills,” said Jack.
“What, in our satin slippers? How very delightful!”
There was no one heroic enough to propose walking up the hills at ten o’clock that evening, when the omnibus from Redwold went bowling merrily over the frost-bound roads, uphill and downhill, at a splendid even pace, and with a rhythmical jingle of bars and chains, as the four upstanding browns laid themselves out for their work, going as if it was a pleasure to go through the steel-blue night, with the quiet fields and pastures stretching round them, silvery in the moonshine, while in every dip and hollow the oak and chestnut copses lay wrapped in shadow, darkly mysterious.
They skirted Bexley Hill, they passed by sleeping villages and windswept commons.
“Are we nearly there?” asked Hilda Champernowne.
“Hardly halfway,” answered Lady Hartley. “I told you it was a long drive.”
There was a bright lamp inside the omnibus, a lamp which lit up the three Miss Champernownes in a cloud of gauze and satin, white as the snowdrifts in the valleys, a lamp which shone on three heads of glittering gold-brown hair, and three pairs of fine eyes, and three cherry mouths, and three swanlike throats rising out of ostrich plumage. It shone on Maud Hartley’s cloak of scarlet and gold and blue-fox fur, and sparkled on the diamond solitaires in her ears, clear and white as dewdrops on a sunny morning.
They were a very merry party. Major Baddington and Sir Hubert were outside, wrapped to the ears in fur coats and caps, and enjoying their smoke in the frosty air. Vansittart and two other young men rode inside with the feminine contingent, who were glad of this leaven of masculine society, though they pretended to be in alarm at the crushing of their draperies.
“I feel a dark foreboding that all the dancing men will have engaged themselves for the evening before we arrive,” said Claudia Champernowne.
“Not if they know the Miss Champernownes are going to be there,” said Mr. Tivett, a young man with a small voice and a reputation for all the social talents.
“Who cares anything about us?” cried Claudia. “We are strangers in the land.”
“I think that some of the dancing men will wait for my party,” said Maud. “I am famous for taking pretty girls to our local dances.”
They were steadily ascending the worst hill they had to climb; the omnibus was on an inclined plane, and Hilda Champernowne in her place at the back of the vehicle looked down upon Jack Vansittart seated in a hollow by the door. They were near the top, when the brake was put on suddenly, and the horses were pulled up. A ripple of silvery laughter rang out upon the frosty air.
“Fairies!” cried Vansittart.
“Who can it be, and why are we stopping?” asked Miss Champernowne, “when we are so late, too!”
There were voices, two or three feminine voices, all talking at once, and then Hubert was heard answering. Anon more laughter. Sir Hubert and a groom got off the bus, and the former came to the door.
“Can you make room for three girls?” he asked.
“Not for a mouse,” replied his wife. “We are hideously crushed already. I believe all our gowns are spoilt.”
“Then a little more squeezing won’t hurt,” said Sir Hubert. “Look here, you three men can come outside. It’ll be a tight pack, but we’ll manage it, and the three ladies can have your places. It’s a lovely night. You’re none of you bronchial, I hope.”
“A chronic sufferer, from my cradle,” said Mr. Tivett, in a meek, little voice.
“Oh, Tivett can stay inside. He is the nearest approach I know to Euclid’s definition of a line—length without breadth.”
Jack Vansittart was out by this time, and Reggie Hudson, a soldierly young man, slipped out after him. The women drew themselves together discontentedly. Each would have had an omnibus to herself if she could.
“I haven’t the faintest idea whom we are making room for,” grumbled Maud.
“I know we shall be dreadfully late,” sighed Claudia.
“I say, you good folks out there, hurry up, please,” cried the gallant Tivett. “It’s getting on for eleven, and this isn’t
