‘O, horror!  Tell Alice to come directly and rub Mrs. Barton’s dress,’ said the Countess to the trembling John, carefully abstaining from approaching the gravy-sprinkled spot on the floor with her own lilac silk.  But Mr. Bridmain, who had a strictly private interest in silks, good-naturedly jumped up and applied his napkin at once to Mrs. Barton’s gown.

Milly felt a little inward anguish, but no ill-temper, and tried to make light of the matter for the sake of John as well as others.  The Countess felt inwardly thankful that her own delicate silk had escaped, but threw out lavish interjections of distress and indignation.

‘Dear saint that you are,’ she said, when Milly laughed, and suggested that, as her silk was not very glossy to begin with, the dim patch would not be much seen; ’you don’t mind about these things, I know.  Just the same sort of thing happened to me at the Princess Wengstein’s one day, on a pink satin.  I was in an agony.  But you are so indifferent to dress; and well you may be.  It is you who make dress pretty, and not dress that makes you pretty.’

Alice, the buxom lady’s-maid, wearing a much better dress than Mrs. Barton’s, now appeared to take Mr. Bridmain’s place in retrieving the mischief, and after a great amount of supplementary rubbing, composure was restored, and the business of dining was continued.  When John was recounting his accident to the cook in the kitchen, he observed, ’Mrs. Barton’s a hamable woman; I’d a deal sooner ha’ throwed the gravy o’er the Countess’s fine gownd.  But laws! what tantrums she’d ha’ been in arter the visitors was gone.’

‘You’d a deal sooner not ha’ throwed it down at all, I should think,’ responded the unsympathetic cook, to whom John did not make love.  ’Who d’you think’s to mek gravy anuff, if you’re to baste people’s gownds wi’ it?’

‘Well,’ suggested John, humbly, ’you should wet the bottom of the duree a bit, to hold it from slippin’.’

‘Wet your granny!’ returned the cook; a retort which she probably regarded in the light of a reductio ad absurdum, and which in fact reduced John to silence.

Later on in the evening, while John was removing the teathings from the drawing-room, and brushing the crumbs from the table-cloth with an accompanying hiss, such as he was wont to encourage himself with in rubbing down Mr. Bridmain’s horse, the Rev. Amos Barton drew from his pocket a thin green-covered pamphlet, and, presenting it to the Countess, said,—­’You were pleased, I think, with my sermon on Christmas Day.  It has been printed in “The Pulpit,” and I thought you might like a copy.’

’That indeed I shall.  I shall quite value the opportunity of reading that sermon.  There was such depth in it!—­such argument!  It was not a sermon to be heard only once.  I am delighted that it should become generally known, as it will be now it is printed in “The Pulpit."’

‘Yes,’ said Milly, innocently, ’I was so pleased with the editor’s letter.’  And she drew out her little pocket-book, where she carefully treasured the editorial autograph, while Mr. Barton laughed and blushed, and said, ‘Nonsense, Milly!’