Page:Framley Parsonage.djvu/197

Rh his unexceptionable gloves, fails to keep us going in sherry.

Seeing a lady the other day in this strait, left without the small modicum of stimulus which was no doubt necessary for her good digestion, I ventured to ask her to drink wine with me. But when I bowed my head at her, she looked at me with all her eyes, struck with amazement. Had I suggested that she should join me in a wild Indian war-dance, with nothing on but my paint, her face could not have shown greater astonishment. And yet I should have thought she might have remembered the days when Christian men and women used to drink wine with each other.

God be with the good old days when I could hobnob with my friend over the table as often as I was inclined to lift my glass to my lips, and make a long arm for a hot potato whenever the exigencies of my plate required it.

I think it may be laid down as a rule in affairs of hospitality that whatever extra luxury or grandeur we introduce at our tables when guests are with us, should be introduced for the advantage of the guest, and not for our own. If, for instance, our dinner be served in a manner different from that usual to us, it should be so served in order that our friends may with more satisfaction eat our repast than our every-day practice would produce on them. But the change should by no means be made to their material detriment in order that our fashion may be acknowledged. Again, if I decorate my sideboard and table, wishing that the eyes of my visitors may rest on that which is elegant and pleasing to the sight, I act in that matter with a becoming sense of hospitality; but if my object be to kill Mrs. Jones with envy at the sight of all my silver trinkets, I am a mean-spirited fellow. This, in a broad way, will be acknowledged; but if we would bear in mind the same idea at all times—on occasions when the way, perhaps, may not be so broad, when more thinking may be required to ascertain what is true hospitality, I think we of the eight hundred would make a greater advance toward really entertaining our own friends than by any rearrangement of the actual meats and dishes which we set before them.

Knowing, as we do, that the terms of the Lufton-Grantly alliance had been so solemnly ratified between the two mothers, it is perhaps hardly open to us to suppose that Mrs. Grantly was induced to take her daughter to Mrs.