replied Mrs Kirkpatrick, in a sharper voice than before, aware that they were wanting her at the piano, and anxious to get the business in hand done as soon as possible.Molly stood still for a minute, then, looking up, she said, softly, - 'Would you mind coming with me, please?' 'No! not I!' said Mrs Kirkpatrick, seeing that her compliance was likely to be the most speedy way of getting through the affair; so she took Molly's hand, and, on the way, in passing the group at the piano, she said, smiling, in her pretty genteel manner, - 'Our little friend here is shy and modest, and wants me to accompany her to Lady Cumnor to wish good-night; her father has come for her, and she is going away.' Molly did not know how it was afterwards, but she pulled her hand out of Mrs Kirkpatrick's on hearing these words, and going a step or two in advance came up to Lady Cumnor, grand in purple velvet, and dropping a curtsey, almost after the fashion of the school-children, she said, - 'My lady, papa is come, and I am going away; and, my lady, I wish you good-night, and thank you for your kindness.Your ladyship's kindness, I mean,' she said, correcting herself as she remembered Miss Browning's particular instructions as to the etiquette to be observed to earls and countesses, and their honourable progeny, as they were given this morning on the road to the Towers.She got out of the saloon somehow; she believed afterwards, on thinking about it, that she had never bidden good-by to Lady Cuxhaven, or Mrs Kirkpatrick, or 'all the rest of them,' as she irreverently styled them in her thoughts.Mr Gibson was in the housekeeper's room, when Molly ran in, rather to the stately Mrs Brown's discomfiture.She threw her arms round her father's neck.'Oh, papa, papa, papa! I am so glad you have come;' and then she burst out crying, stroking his face almost hysterically as if to make sure he was there.'Why, what a noodle you are, Molly! Did you think I was going to give up my little girl to live at the Towers all the rest of her life? You make as much work about my coming for you, as if you thought I had.Make haste now, and get on your bonnet.Mrs Brown, may I ask you for a shawl, or a plaid, or a wrap of some kind to pin about her for a petticoat?' He did not mention that he had come home from a long round not half an hour before, a round from which he had returned dinnerless and hungry;but, on finding that Molly had not returned from the Towers, he had ridden his tired horse round by Miss Brownings', and found them in self-reproachful, helpless dismay.He would not wait to listen to their tearful apologies;he galloped home, had a fresh horse and Molly's pony saddled, and though Berry called after him with a riding-skirt for the child, when he was not ten yards from his own stable-door, he had refused to turn back for it, but gone off, as Dick the stableman said, 'muttering to himself awful.' Mrs Brown had her bottle of wine out, and her plate of cake, before Molly came back from her long expedition to Mrs Kirkpatrick's room, 'pretty nigh on to a quarter of a mile off,' as the housekeeper informed the impatient father, as he waited for his child to come down arrayed in her morning's finery with the gloss of newness worn off.Mr Gibson was a favourite in all the Towers' household, as family doctors generally are; bringing hopes of relief at times of anxiety and distress; and Mrs Brown, who was subject to gout, especially delighted in petting him whenever he would allow her.
第13章 A NOVICE AMONGST THE GREAT FOLK (7)（1 / 3）