Shortly before Christmas Day she called with her sister at the vicarage.  Bell, in the course of the visit, left the room with one of the Boyce girls, to look at the last chrysanthemums of the year.  Then Mrs Boyce took advantage of the occasion to make her little speech.  “My dear Lily,” she said, “you will think me cold if I do not say one word to you.”  “No, I shall not,” said Lily, almost sharply, shrinking from the finger that threatened to touch her sore.  “There are things which should never be talked about.”  “Well, well; perhaps so,” said Mrs Boyce.  But for a minute or two she was unable to fall back upon any other topic, and sat looking at Lily with painful tenderness.  I need hardly say what were Lily’s sufferings under such a gaze; but she bore it, acknowledging to herself in her misery that the fault did not lie with Mrs Boyce.  How could Mrs Boyce have looked at her otherwise than tenderly?

It was settled, then, that Lily was to dine up at the Great House on Christmas Day, and thus show to the Allington world that she was not to be regarded as a person shut out from the world by the depth of her misfortune.  That she was right there can, I think, be no doubt; but as she walked across the little bridge, with her mother and sister, after returning from church, she would have given much to be able to have turned round, and have gone to bed instead of to her uncle’s dinner.

CHAPTER XXXII

Pawkins’s in Jermyn Street

The show of fat beasts in London took place this year on the twentieth day of December, and I have always understood that a certain bullock exhibited by Lord De Guest was declared by the metropolitan butchers to have realised all the possible excellences of breeding, feeding, and condition.  No doubt the butchers of the next half-century will have learned much better, and the Guestwick beast, could it be embalmed and then produced, would excite only ridicule at the agricultural ignorance of the present age; but Lord De Guest took the praise that was offered to him, and found himself in a seventh heaven of delight.  He was never so happy as when surrounded by butchers, graziers, and salesmen who were able to appreciate the work of his life, and who regarded him as a model nobleman.  “Look at that fellow,” he said to Eames, pointing to the prize bullock.  Eames had joined his patron at the show after his office hours, looking on upon the living beef by gaslight.  “Isn’t he like his sire?  He was got by Lambkin, you know.”

“Lambkin,” said Johnny, who had not as yet been able to learn much about the Guestwick stock.

“Yes, Lambkin.  The bull that we had the trouble with.  He has just got his sire’s back and fore-quarters.  Don’t you see?”

“I daresay,” said Johnny, who looked very hard, but could not see.

“It’s very odd,” exclaimed the earl, “but do you know, that bull has been as quiet since that day,—­as quiet as—­as anything.  I think it must have been my pocket-handkerchief.”