[Sidenote:  A Dull Hour]

Agnes had put out my white cashmere for tea, and at five I started to find my way to the blue drawing-room.  The bannisters are so broad and slippery—­the very things for sliding on.  I feel as if I should start down them one day, just to astonish Adeline, only I promised you I would be good.  Well, when I got to the drawing-room, the party—­about twelve—­had assembled.  The old Earl had been wheeled in from his rooms:  he wears a black velvet skull-cap and a stock but he has a splendid and distinguished old face.  If I were he, I would not have such a dull daughter-in-law to live with me as Lady Carriston is, even if my son was dead.  The boy, Charlie Carriston, was there too; he does look a goose.  He is like those pictures in the Punch that I was looking at, where the family is so old that their chins and foreheads have gone.  He is awfully afraid of his mother.  There were two or three elderly pepper-and-salt men, and that Trench cousin, who is a very High Church curate (you know Aunt Mary told us about him), and there are a Sir Samuel and Lady Garnons, with an old maid daughter, and Adeline’s German governess, who has stayed on as companion, and helped to pour out the tea.

[Sidenote:  A Modern Grandison]

The conversation was subdued; about politics and Cabinet Ministers, and pheasants and foxes, and things of that kind, and no one said anything that meant anything else, as they did at Nazeby, or were witty like they were at Tournelle, and the German governess said “Ach” to everything, and Lady Garnons and Miss Garnons knitted all the time, which gave their voices the sound of “one-two-three” when they spoke, although they did not really count.  No one had on tea-gowns—­just a Sunday sort of clothes.  I don’t know how we should have got through tea if the coffee-cream cakes had not been so good.  The old Earl called me to him when he had finished, and talked so beautifully to me; he paid me some such grand old-fashioned compliments, and his voice sounds as if he had learnt elocution in his youth.  There is not a word of slang or anything modern; one quite understands how he was able to wake up the House of Lords before his legs gave way.  It seems sad that such a ninny as Charlie should succeed him.  I feel proud of being related to him, but I shall never think of Lady Carriston except as a distant cousin.  Both Charlie and Adeline are so afraid of her that they hardly speak.

I shan’t waste any of my best frocks here, so I made Agnes put me on the old blue silk for the evening.  She was disgusted.  At dinner I sat between Charlie and one of the pepper-and-salts—­he is a M.P.  They are going to shoot partridges to-morrow; and I don’t know what we shall do, as there has been no suggestion of our going out to lunch.