may wish to waste the entire rest of the afternoon, but I’ve business to attend to. Good-bye, Fido,” he said to the dog, which wagged its tail in reply.
“But—Lord Boring!” I said. “I have not yet heard your suggestion for the dog’s name.”
“Oh, I expect Fredericks is right and you ought to call the little fellow Fido.”
Upon hearing the word Fido, the traitorous dog wagged its tail again.
“There, you see?” said Mr. Fredericks, a sudden smile lighting up his narrow face.
My mother added, “Fido is a lovely name. Good dog, Fido,” and the dog wriggled all over in a paroxysm of delight.
I sighed. Evidently the dog had a name. And it was a name chosen by Mr. Fredericks, rather than by the man who had given him to me.
“Good-bye, Master Alexander,” said Mr. Fredericks, presenting the much improved toy to the boy. “See that you take care of that mare and her equipage,” he admonished, “and don’t haul in too hard on those reins or she’ll bolt on you. Miss Hrrm,” he said to me, “that thread you are using is poor quality; it will break under stress, and if it does not, it will rot in these damp, salty conditions.” He turned to his friend. “Boring, I’ll see about the horses.” Whereupon he got up and left the room without a word to his hostess, or to anyone else.
Lord Boring made his farewells properly, like a gentleman. When they had gone, I could not help but cry out, “Why, oh why does His Lordship suffer the company of that odious man?”
Prudence bridled. “I do not find him so,” she said. “Mr. Fredericks is a fine-looking man.”
I raised my eyebrows in disbelief. Prudence was building hopes of attracting him as a suitor, after all. Tho’ only the son of a shop clerk, he was the grandson of a baron, and that atoned for a great deal. I suppose she felt that the money she would bring to the marriage would be matched by the whiff of nobility, and the right to visit Gudgeon Park on familiar terms. How she would bring herself to forgive Mr. Fredericks’s mother for her rash mésalliance I did not know. In any case, as he had not so much as glanced in her direction, I did not think much of her chances.
“When he smiles, he is very attractive,” agreed my mother. “It was good-natured of him to mend Alexander’s toy.”
“He broke it,” I observed.
“Ah, but not one in a hundred men would have spent the greater part of an hour, and the whole of their visit, on such a fiddling little job with a small child’s toy. Now, if he were trying to win the esteem of the child’s sister, perhaps yes, but . . .” She trailed off, eyeing me doubtfully. Even my mama, partial as she was, could not convince herself that Mr. Fredericks was in love with me, or indeed had noticed my existence, other than as the new owner of a puppy in which he had interested himself. “Truly, Althea,” she went on, “I do not think his heart is bad, only his manner.”
“His manner is quite enough to condemn him in my eyes,” I said. “How he could speak of wasting the rest of the afternoon in our company! And to leave without a proper good-bye to you, Mama! I find him quite insufferable.”
“You would change your mind soon enough if you believed him a man of property,” said Prudence. “If he were a rich man, you’d be only too happy to set your cap at him.”
“I do not deny,” I said after a moment’s reflection, “that I consider it my duty to marry a man of substance to ensure that little Alexander shall inherit this property in due course, and, furthermore, to ensure that my mother and even my stepsisters will always have a home to call their own in the event that they do not marry. But I find that I do have standards, below which I am unwilling to sink. I swear to you that nothing, nothing! could tempt me to marry Mr. Fredericks, even had he all the wealth of the Indies in his pocket.”
And I swept out of the room, the dog Fido trotting close behind.
“How pleasant it is,” said the Marquis of Bumbershook, “to recline at one’s ease in a castle garden in June, while nearby four lovely ladies sit and sew a fine seam.”
Having completed his business in York, the Marquis had returned