"I disdain to answer your silly quibble over the word _guest_," Adrian continued, ignoring the rejoinder. "La Nobil Donna Susanna Torrebianca is a guest. And as master of the house, by your return, you _ex officio_ supersede me in the capacity of host."
"_Ex officio_?" repeated Anthony, considering. "The fashion of adorning ordinary speech with classical quotations has long since passed from use."
"And therefore,"--Adrian brought his theorem to its conclusion,--"unless you particularly aspire to seem--and to be--an absolute barbarian, a bear, a boor, a churl, and a curmudgeon,"--each epithet received an augmented stress,--"you must call at Craford New Manor with the least possible delay. As I find myself in rather good form just now, and feel that I should shine to perhaps exceptional advantage, I suggest that we call forthwith."
Anthony got up, and sleepily stretched his arms.
"Ah, well," he consented; "since your fond heart is set upon it--there. It will be an awful fag; but when Dimplechin becomes importunate, I can deny him nothing."
"You are a good child, after all," he said, "and you shall have jam with your tea."
"I think I have fooled that fellow to the top of his bent," was Anthony's silent self-gratulation.
His pulse beat high, as they walked across the park.
"How could I ever have contemplated waiting till Sunday?" he asked himself, in a maze.
Sunday, the day after the day after to-morrow, seemed, in his present eagerness, to belong to the dim distances of futurity.
And all the way, as they passed under the great trees, over the cool, close turf, with its powdering of daisies and buttercups and poppies, through alternations of warm sun and deep shadow, where sheep browsed, and little snow-white awkward lambkins sported, and birds piped, and the air was magical with the scent of the blossoming may,--all the way, amid the bright and dark green vistas of lawn and glade, the summer loveliness mixed with his anticipation of standing face to face with her, and rendered it more poignant.
"If cats were always kittens, And rats were always mice, And elderberries were younger berries, Now would n't that be nice?"--
Adrian, walking beside him, trilled joyously.
"You seem in high spirits," Anthony remarked.