Wives and Daughters | Page 3

that no strangers had seen
Hollingford properly, unless they had been taken to the countess's
school, and been duly impressed by the neat little pupils, and the still
neater needlework there to be inspected. In return, there was a day of
honour set apart every summer, when with much gracious and stately
hospitality, Lady Cumnor and her daughters received all the school
visitors at the Towers, the great family mansion standing in aristocratic
seclusion in the centre of the large park, of which one of the lodges was
close to the little town. The order of this annual festivity was this.
About ten o'clock one of the Towers' carriages rolled through the lodge,
and drove to different houses, wherein dwelt a woman to be honoured;
picking them up by ones or twos, till the loaded carriage drove back
again through the ready portals, bowled along the smooth tree-shaded

road, and deposited its covey of smartly- dressed ladies on the great
flight of steps leading to the ponderous doors of Cumnor Towers. Back
again to the town; another picking up of womankind in their best
clothes, and another return, and so on till the whole party were
assembled either in the house or in the really beautiful gardens. After
the proper amount of exhibition on the one part, and admiration on the
other, had been done, there was a collation for the visitors, and some
more display and admiration of the treasures inside the house. Towards
four o'clock, coffee was brought round; and this was a signal of the
approaching carriage that was to take them back to their own homes;
whither they returned with the happy consciousness of a well-spent day,
but with some fatigue at the long- continued exertion of behaving their
best, and talking on stilts for so many hours. Nor were Lady Cumnor
and her daughters free from something of the same self-approbation,
and something, too, of the same fatigue; the fatigue that always follows
on conscious efforts to behave as will best please the society you are in.
For the first time in her life, Molly Gibson was to be included among
the guests at the Towers. She was much too young to be a visitor at the
school, so it was not on that account that she was to go; but it had so
happened that one day when Lord Cumnor was on a 'pottering'
expedition, he had met Mr. Gibson, the doctor of the neighbourhood,
coming out of the farm-house my lord was entering; and having some
small question to ask the surgeon (Lord Cumnor seldom passed any
one of his acquaintance without asking a question of some sort--not
always attending to the answer; it was his mode of conversation), he
accompanied Mr. Gibson to the out-building, to a ring in the wall of
which the surgeon's horse was fastened. Molly was there too, sitting
square and quiet on her rough little pony, waiting for her father. Her
grave eyes opened large and wide at the close neighbourhood and
evident advance of 'the earl'; for to her little imagination the
grey-haired, red-faced, somewhat clumsy man, was a cross between an
archangel and a king.
'Your daughter, eh, Gibson?--nice little girl, how old? Pony wants
grooming though,' patting it as he talked. 'What's your name, my dear?
He's sadly behindhand with his rent, as I was saying, but if he's really

ill, I must see after Sheepshanks, who is a hardish man of business.
What's his complaint? You'll come to our school-scrimmage on
Thursday, little girl--what's-your-name? Mind you send her, or bring
her, Gibson; and just give a word to your groom, for I'm sure that pony
wasn't singed last year, now, was he? Don't forget Thursday, little
girl--what's your name?--it's a promise between us, is it not?' And off
the earl trotted, attracted by the sight of the farmer's eldest son on the
other side of the yard.
Mr. Gibson mounted, and he and Molly rode off. They did not speak
for some time. Then she said, 'May I go, papa?' in rather an anxious
little tone of voice.
'Where, my dear?' said he, wakening up out of his own professional
thoughts.
'To the Towers--on Thursday, you know. That gentleman' (she was shy
of calling him by his title) 'asked me.'
'Would you like it, my dear? It has always seemed to me rather a
tiresome piece of gaiety--rather a tiring day, I mean--beginning so
early--and the heat, and all that.'
'Oh, papa!' said Molly reproachfully.
'You'd like to go then, would you?'
'Yes if I may!--He asked me, you know. Don't you think I may?--he
asked me twice over.'
'Well! we'll see--yes! I think we can manage it, if you wish it so much,
Molly.'
Then they were silent again. By-and-by, Molly said:
'Please, papa--I