"Oh, yes," she said, with perfect good-humour, "of course you will do just what I please, but--I am acquainted with your buts, you young folk--you forget that I was once young myself. No, Philip, Katie is very well for the house, but it does not do for the world. What would you think in the middle of your grand party, with all the county there, as your mother says--that is, if we are asked, which I am not taking for granted----" "There shall be no party in any house I belong to, where you are not asked the very first," Philip said. "Well, that is a very nice thing to say. It is just what it is becoming and nice for you to say, having been so much about our house. But what would people think, if you were to be heard with your Katie here and Katie there in the middle of all the fine county ladies? What would they say? You see, I am obliged to think of all that." "I don't know what they would think," said Philip, with what Mrs. Seton called afterwards, "a very red face." "I don't know what they might say--but I know what I should tell them, if any one of them ventured----" Mrs. Seton put up her hand to stop him. She would indeed have liked very much to hear what he would have told them, if any one had ventured--But, after all, she had no mind to betray him into a hasty statement. She put up her hand, and said, "Whisht, whisht! You may be sure nobody would venture. I will tell you what they would say. They would say _that_ Mrs. Seton's a silly woman not to notice that her daughter is grown up, and to make other people take notice of it too. So you see, after all, it is myself I am thinking of," she concluded, with a laugh.