Page:The Small House at Allington Vol 2.djvu/248

226 Crofts stared at you. Come, you've only got twenty minutes, and you London fellows always want an hour."

"He's entitled to some consideration now he's a private secretary," said Lady Julia.

"Bless us all! yes; I forgot that. Come, Mr. Private Secretary, don't stand on the grandeur of your neck-tie to-day, as there's nobody here but ourselves. You shall have an opportunity tomorrow."

Then Johnny was handed over to the groom of the chambers, and exactly in twenty minutes he re-appeared in the drawing-room.

As soon as Lady Julia had left them after dinner, the earl began to explain his plan for the coming campaign. "I'll tell you now what I have arranged," said he. "The squire is to be here tomorrow with his eldest niece,—your Miss Lily's sister, you know."

"What, Bell?"

"Yes, with Bell, if her name is Bell. She's a very pretty girl, too. I don't know whether she's not the prettiest of the two, after all."

"That's a matter of opinion."

"Just so, Johnny; and do you stick to your own. They're coming here for three or four days. Lady Julia did ask Mrs. Dale and Lily. I wonder whether you'll let me call her Lily?"

"Oh, dear! I wish I might have the power of letting you."

"That's just the battle that you've got to fight. But the mother and the younger sister wouldn't come. Lady Julia says it's all right;—that, as a matter of course, she wouldn't come when she heard you were to be here. I don't quite understand it. In my days the young girls were ready enough to go where they knew they'd meet their lovers, and I never thought any the worse of them for it."

"It wasn't because of that," said Eames.

"That's what Lady Julia says, and I always find her to be right in things of that sort. And she says you'll have a better chance in going over there than you would here, if she were in the same house with you. If I was going to make love to a girl, of course I'd sooner have her close to me,—staying in the same house. I should think it the best fun in the world. And we might have had a dance, and all that kind of thing. But I couldn't make her come, you know."

"Oh, no; of course not."

"And Lady Julia thinks that it's best as it is. You must go