‘There, now I’ve done!’ said Molly, standing up quickly as soon as she had finished the eighteen dreary pages; ’and I think I will never sit down to play again!’

Osborne laughed at her vehemence.  Cynthia began to take some part in what was being said, and thus made the conversation general.  Mrs Gibson wakened up gracefully, as was her way of doing all things, and slid into the subjects they were talking about so easily, that she almost succeeded in making them believe she had never been asleep at all.

CHAPTER XXV

HOLLINGFORD IN A BUSTLE

All Hollingford felt as if there was a great deal to be done before Easter this year.  There was Easter proper, which always required new clothing of some kind, for fear of certain consequences from little birds, who were supposed to resent the impiety of those who do not wear some new article of dress on Easter-day.’  And most ladies considered it wiser that the little birds should see the new article for themselves, and not have to take it upon trust, as they would have to do if it were merely a pocket-handkerchief, or a petticoat, or any article of under-clothing.  So piety demanded a new bonnet, or a new gown; and was barely satisfied with an Easter pair of gloves.  Miss Rose was generally very busy just before Easter in Hollingford.  Then this year there was the charity ball.  Ashcombe, Hollingford, and Coreham were three neighbouring towns, of about the same number of population, lying at the three equidistant corners of a triangle.  In imitation of greater cities with their festivals, these three towns had agreed to have an annual ball for the benefit of the county hospital to be held in turn at each place; and Hollingford was to be the place this year.

It was a fine time for hospitality, and every house of any pretension was as full as it could hold, and flys were engaged long months before.

If Mrs. Gibson could have asked Osborne, or in default, Roger Hamley to go to the ball with them and to sleep at their house,—­or if, indeed, she could have picked up any stray scion of a ‘county family’ to whom such an offer would have been a convenience, she would have restored her own dressing-room to its former use as the spare-room, with pleasure.  But she did not think it was worth her while to put herself out for any of the humdrum and ill-dressed women who had been her former acquaintance at Ashcombe.  For Mr Preston it might have been worth while to give up her room, considering him in the light of a handsome and prosperous young man, and a good dancer besides.  But there were more lights in which he was to be viewed.  Mr. Gibson, who really wanted to return the hospitality shown to him by Mr. Preston at the time of his marriage, had yet an instinctive distaste to the man, which no wish of freeing himself from obligation, nor even the more worthy feeling of hospitality, could overcome.