"For of course we can't give the tea without inviting old lady Gordon. Her social position makes it essential that she shall be invited if Doris is to be properly launched," Miss Judy said just as though she were some artful, calculating schemer, dealing with some keen and suspicious stranger who was likely to raise objections. "And I am sure that I merely express your views, when I say that we could not be so discourteous as to invite old lady Gordon without also inviting her grandson, when he is a guest at her house." And Miss Sophia answered all this artfulness firmly, even sternly, as if she were an able abetter, standing ready to carry out the dark, deeply laid plot. XV SIDNEY DOES HER DUTY These pleasant plans were entirely unsuspected by Sidney. She felt, however, the need of something of the kind, and--with characteristic energy--entered forthwith into the making and the carrying out of some of her own, of a different kind, though leading in the same direction. The call upon old lady Gordon, a first step, turned out a good deal of a disappointment. Lynn Gordon was, to be sure, in attendance upon his grandmother when Sidney appeared, and she thus secured a glimpse of him, but nothing more satisfactory, nothing nearly approaching acquaintance. As ill luck would have it, old lady Gordon, who rarely left home, chanced to be just starting to "make a broad," as the Oldfield people described visiting beyond the village. The ancient family carriage, with its fat pair of old grays, already waited at the front gate in the shade of the cypress tree. On the back of the coach was a trunk-rack, put there, doubtless, at the building of the vehicle in the days when the country gentry travelled far in their own coaches, and had need of their wardrobes on the road. Under the reign of the present mistress, who had not for years gone farther than a single day's journey from home, the trunk-rack had been turned to other than its original uses, and on that particular morning it bore a large hamper of food. This was so full and heavy that it had been all that Enoch and Eunice could do to carry it between them; and, now when it was securely strapped in its place and Enoch was seated upon the box of the coach, Eunice stood leaning over the fence, with her arms rolled in her apron, giving Enoch final directions for the serving of the luncheon, so that there might be no trouble with the mistress.