Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/152

 word of it; I have even no hint of your arrival; and so, my dear Miss Canticle, I must beseech you to take things at Cleeby very much as you may find them, and accept this for their apology. Let me repeat, my dear Miss Canticle, that I had not the ghost of an idea that we were about to be so greatly honoured."

Now I was in a fever of anxiety and fear, and the face of Emblem announced similar emotions. We were at such a disadvantage that to prompt Miss Prudence in the ordering of her speech and conduct was outside the question utterly. But 'twas little she needed prompting. For she seemed superbly at her ease, fell into fiction of the cheerfullest and most high-coloured sort, without one "ahem!" of hesitation; and contrived from the beginning to treat her majesty, my aunt, with the most easy familiarity she could possibly employ.

"I am sure the apology should be supplied by me," Miss Prudence says. "I never writ Bab a word about it, did I, darling? But t'other morning my papa orders the chaise for town. I asked him would he pass near Cleeby on the way? That he would, says he. Then, says I, you shall drop me down there, and, faith! I'll spend a week with my ownest Bab. All this age I have not seen her."

And I believe the incredible rogue would have kissed me on the spot, as I could not possibly have said him nay, had I not drawn my face from the threatening proximity of his mouth.

"Your papa, Miss Prudence?" my aunt echoed