Precious, in proportion to their rarity, opinions so orthodox sank like music in the Reverend’s ear. Five-and-twenty years’ experience had failed to teach him, that such congenial sentiments must as necessarily be followed by a request, as a soft southerly wind is succeeded by rain. And this is the strangest feature in our subservience to the other sex. Though they deceive us ninety-nine times, we believe them the hundredth, and, more foolish than the feathered biped, though its meshes be spread in our very sight, rush open-eyed, neck-and-heels into the net of the fowler.
The Reverend glanced at the wife of his bosom, and thought her wonderfully like that picture done a score of years ago. He said as much: but the compliment by no means diverted Mrs. Dove from the object she had in view. “Cissy and I were just talking,” said she simply, “of your friend Mr. Crasher, and the rest of them. By the bye, you really ought to ask some of them to dinner. There’s a barrel of oysters come by rail last night, and our turkeys this year are finer than usual. Better say Tuesday, don’t you think, Papa?” added she coaxingly.
But the Reverend was not so hospitably inclined as he would have been had the old horse been sound. “They can have plenty of oysters at Harborough,” said he. “They won’t care to drive all that way in the dark. Bad roads, wet nights, perhaps, and nobody to meet them. Better put it off, I think, Dottie, till the days get a little longer.”
You or I would hardly have thought of calling so ample a lady as Mrs. Dove, whose baptismal name indeed was Dorothy, by the above diminutive. Nevertheless, when in his best humour, it was the Reverend’s habit to address her by the old pet name, and she returned to the charge accordingly.
“Better do it at once, dear,” she replied. “The end of the season comes upon us before we know where we are. And if frost should arrive, or anything, they are all off to London by the express train. As for not liking to come, they’ll _jump_ at it. Mr. Crasher says yours is the best claret within three counties, and I’m sure you all sit long enough at it to appreciate its merits. How you _will_ talk about hunting: won’t they, Cissy? Well, we can’t wonder at it—gentlemen are so enthusiastic. Why, if I was a man, with such wine as _that_, I’d sell ’em every horse in my stable before coffee came in.”