The Patrician — Inside the Classic

little face, and wide frank hazel eyes over a little nose that came out straight and sudden. Encircled by a loose belt placed far below the waist of her holland frock, as if to symbolize freedom, she seemed to think everything in life good fun. And soon she found the exciting thing.

“Here's a bumble bee, William. Do you think I could tame it in my little glass bog?”

“No, I don't, Miss Ann; and look out, you'll be stung!”

“It wouldn't sting me.”

“Because it wouldn't.”

“Of course—if you say so——”

“What time is the motor ordered?”

“I'm going with Grandpapa as far as the gate.”

“Suppose he says you're not?”

“Well, then I shall go all the same.”

“I might go all the way with him to London! Is Auntie Babs going?”

“No, I don't think anybody is going with his lordship.”

“I would, if she were. William!”

“Is Uncle Eustace sure to be elected?”

“Do you think he'll be a good Member of Parliament?”

“Lord Miltoun is very clever, Miss Ann.”

“Well, don't you think so?”

“Does Charles think so?”

“I don't like London. I like here, and I like Cotton, and I like home pretty well, and I love Pendridny—and—I like Ravensham.”

“His lordship is going to Ravensham to-day on his way up, I heard say.”

“Oh! then he'll see great-granny. William——”

“Here's Miss Wallace.”

From the doorway a lady with a broad pale patient face said:

“All right! Hallo, Simmons!”

The entering butler replied:

“I'm sure we're very sorry.”

The door banged faintly, and in the great room rose the busy silence of those minutes which precede repasts. Suddenly the four men by the breakfast fable stood back. Lord Valleys had come in.

He approached slowly, reading a blue paper, with his level grey eyes divided by a little uncharacteristic frown. He had a tanned yet ruddy, decisively shaped face, with crisp hair and moustache beginning to go iron-grey—the face of a man who knows his own mind and is contented with that knowledge. His figure too, well-braced and upright, with the back of the head carried like a soldier's, confirmed the impression, not so much of self-sufficiency, as of the sufficiency of his habits of life and thought. And there was apparent about all his movements that peculiar unconsciousness of his surroundings which comes to those who live a great deal in the public eye, have the material machinery of existence placed exactly to their hands, and never need to consider what others think of them. Taking his seat, and still perusing the paper, he at once began to eat what was put before him; then noticing that his eldest daughter had come in and was sitting down beside him, he said:

“Bore having to go up in such weather!”

“Is it a Cabinet meeting?”

“Yes. This confounded business of the balloons.” But the rather anxious dark eyes of Agatha's delicate narrow face were taking in the details of a tray for keeping dishes warm on a sideboard, and she was thinking: “I believe that would be better than the ones I've got, after all. If William would only say whether he really likes these large trays better than single hot-water dishes!” She contrived how-ever to ask in her gentle voice—for all her words and movements were gentle, even a little timid, till anything appeared to threaten the welfare of her husband or children:

“Do you think this war scare good for Eustace's prospects, Father?”

But her father did not answer; he was greeting a new-comer, a tall, fine-looking young man, with dark hair and a fair moustache, between whom and himself there was no relationship, yet a certain negative resemblance. Claud Fresnay, Viscount Harbinger, was indeed also a little of what is called the 'Norman' type—having a certain firm regularity of feature, and a slight aquilinity of nose high up on the bridge—but that which in the elder man seemed to indicate only an unconscious acceptance of self as a standard, in the younger man gave an impression at once more assertive and more uneasy, as though he were a little afraid of not chaffing something all the time.