Mr. Johns said he must go and see about his packing, but as no one paid any attention to him he remained. Mrs. Rivers, though chagrined at Lord Pomfret’s strictures on her son, was pleased by his praise of Phoebe, and determined to make the best of things.
‘Phoebe does look well just now,’ she said, with a burst of mother’s candour. ‘And she and Gillie seem to get on so well.’
The earl made his formidable noise, a noise which to Mr. Johns’s sensitive ear appeared to be the equivalent of the transatlantic ‘You’re telling me’, but offered no further comment.
‘I was thinking,’ Mrs. Rivers continued, ‘that as Cousin Edith is rather tired, perhaps she’d like me to see to the arrangements to-day. I thought Phoebe and Gillie might ride this morning as they haven’t gone with the guns, and then
