CHAPTER XIV.
dinner at the cleeve.
Lady Mason on her return from London found a note from Mrs. Orme asking both her and her son to dine at The Cleeve on the following day. As it had been already settled between her and Sir Peregrine that Lucius should dine there in order that he might be talked to respecting his mania for guano, the invitation could not be refused; but, as for Lady Mason herself, she would much have preferred to remain at home.
Indeed, her uneasiness on that guano matter had been so outweighed by worse uneasiness from another source, that she had become, if not indifferent, at any rate tranquil on the subject. It might be well that Sir Peregrine should preach his sermon, and well that Lucius should hear it; but for herself it would, she thought, have been more comfortable for her to eat her dinner alone. She felt, however, that she could not do so. Any amount of tedium would be better than the danger of offering a slight to Sir Peregrine, and therefore she wrote a pretty little note to say that both of them would be at The Cleeve at seven.
'Lucius, my dear, I want you to do me a great favour,' she said as she sat by her son in the Hamworth fly.
'A great favour, mother! of course I will do anything for you that I can.'
'It is that you will bear with Sir Peregrine to-night.'
'Bear with him! I do not know exactly what you mean. Of course I will remember that he is an old man, and not answer him as I would one of my own age.'
'I am sure of that, Lucius, because you are a gentleman. As much forbearance as that a young man, if he be a gentleman, will always show to an old man. But what I ask is something more that that. Sir Peregrine has been farming all his life.'
'Yes; and see what are the results! He has three or four hundred acres of uncultivated land on his estate, all of which would grow wheat.'
'I know nothing about that,' said Lady Mason.
'Ah, but that's the question. My trade is to be that of a farmer,
