Courtship -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Love stories; Single women -- Fiction
Mrs Mackenzie was not on that occasion able to persuade Margaret to
come at once to Cavendish Square, and neither was Margaret able to
give a final refusal. She did not intend to go, but she could not
bring herself to speak a positive answer in such a way as to have
much weight with Mrs Mackenzie. That lady left her at last, saying
that she would send her husband, and promising Margaret that she
would herself come in ten days to fetch her.
"Oh no," said Margaret; "it will be very good-natured of you to come,
but not for that."
"But I shall come, and shall come for that," said Mrs Mackenzie;
and at the end of the ten days she did come, and she did carry her
husband's cousin back with her to Cavendish Square.
In the meantime Walter Mackenzie had called in Arundel Street,
and had seen Margaret. But there had been given to her advice by
a counsellor whom she was more inclined to obey than any of the
Mackenzies. John Ball had written to her, saying that he had heard of
the proposition, and recommending her to accept the invitation given
to her.
"Till all this trouble about the property is settled," said he, "it
will be much better that you should be with your cousins than living
alone in Mrs Buggins' lodgings."
After receiving this Margaret held out no longer but was carried off
by the handsome lady in the grand carriage, very much to the delight
of Mrs Buggins.
Mrs Buggins' respect for Miss Mackenzie had returned altogether
since she had heard of the invitation to Cavendish Square, and she
apologised, almost without ceasing, for the liberty she had taken in
suggesting that Margaret should drink tea with her husband.
"And indeed, Miss, I shouldn't have proposed such a thing, were it
ever so, if I had suspected for a hinstant how things were a going to
be. For Buggins is a man as knows his place, and never puts himself
beyond it! But you was that close, Miss--"
In answer to this Margaret would say that it didn't signify, and that
it wasn't on that account; and I have no doubt but that the two women
thoroughly understood each other.
There was a subject on which, in spite of all her respect, Mrs
Buggins ventured to give Miss Mackenzie much advice, and to insist on
that advice strongly. Mrs Buggins was very anxious that the future
"baronet's lady" should go out upon her grand visit with a proper
assortment of clothing. That argument of the baronet's lady was the
climax of Mrs Buggins' eloquence: "You, my dear, as is going to be
one baronet's lady is going to a lady who is going to be another
baronet's lady, and it's only becoming you should go as is becoming."
Margaret declared that she was not going to be anybody's lady, but
Mrs Buggins altogether pooh-poohed this assertion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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