This lasted but a moment.  He had one friend in the group who was too true to her flirtations while they endured, and too strong-willed, to let her flirtee be discouraged by mortal.

“Why, it is Mr. Dodd,” cried she, with enthusiasm, and she put forth both hands to him, the palms downward, with a smiling grace.  “Surely you know Mr. Dodd,” said she, turning round quickly to the gentlemen, with a smile on her lip, but a dangerous devil in her eye.

The mistress of the house is all-powerful on these occasions.  Messrs. Talboys and Fountain were forced to do the amiable, raging within; Lucy anticipated them; but her welcome was a cold one.  Says Mrs. Bazalgette, tenderly, “And why do you carry that heavy bag, when you have that great stout lad with you?  I think it is his business to carry it, not yours”; and her eyes scathed the boy, fiddle and all.

All the time she was saying this David was winking to her, and making faces to her not to go on that tack.  His conduct now explained his pantomime.  “Here, youngster,” said he, “you take these things in-doors, and here is your half-crown.”

Lucy averted her head, and smiled unobserved.

As soon as the lad was out of hearing, David continued:  “It was not worth while to mortify him.  The fact is, I hired him to carry it; but, bless you, the first mile he began to go down by the head, and would have foundered; so we shifted our cargoes.”  This amused Kenealy, who laughed good-humoredly.  On this, David laughed for company.

“There,” cried his inamorata, with rapture, “that is Mr. Dodd all over; thinks of everybody, high or low, before himself.”  There was a grunt somewhere behind her; her quick ear caught it; she turned round like a thing on a pivot, and slapped the nearest face.  It happened to be Fountain’s; so she continued with such a treacle smile, “Don’t you remember, sir, how he used to teach your cub mathematics gratis?” The sweet smile and the keen contemporaneous scratch confounded Mr. Fountain for a second.  As soon as he revived he said stiffly, “We can all appreciate Mr. Dodd.”

Having thus established her Adonis on a satisfactory footing, she broke out all over graciousness again, and, smiling and chatting, led her guests beneath the hospitable roof.

But one of these guests did not respond to her cheerful strain.  The Norman knight was full of bitterness.  Mr. Talboys drew his friend aside and proposed to him to go back again.  The senior was aghast.  “Don’t be so precipitate,” was all that he could urge this time.  “Confound the fellow!  Yes, if that is the man she prefers to you, I will go home with you to-morrow, and the vile hussy shall never enter my doors again.”

In this mind the pair went devious to their dressing-rooms.