The brazenness of it! My Lord guffawed again. He certainly was in a most unpleasant mood. “Huthen. I hope you’ll be as successful as my Lady there!” “Oh! My Lady Kilcroney!...” “Sure, isn’t it the surprise of her life.” Kilcroney once again waded heavily in sarcasm. “She hadn’t as much as the faintest notion such a thing could happen to her--had you, me Lady? She hadn’t as much as opened her mouth for the plum”--it was perhaps the purple artifice on the table that suggested the simile--“but didn’t it drop into it? It’s going to be Lady-in-Waiting she is, in place of my Lady Flo----” “Oh! my Lord, say you so? Says he right, my dearest Lady Kilcroney? ’Tis the most splendid, the most monstrous delightful news I’ve heard this long time. Oh!” cried Mrs. Lafone, clasping and wringing her hands in an ecstasy. “May not your little Molly rejoice with you?” “You are vastly disinterested,” said Kitty. Mrs. Lafone gave her tinkling laugh. “Ah, my Lady--indeed, my Lord, I have said that I am frank. Dearest Lady Kilcroney, I will be frank--If I could obtain some little post--the teeniest, weeniest little post at court----” But Kitty interrupted, bouncing out of her stateliness. “Pray, Mrs. Lafone, for what post should you consider yourself qualified about the august person of our gracious Queen?” “Oh! My Lady Kilcroney, the least little post in all the world! Hath not the Queen appointed a plain Miss Burney reader? I believe I could very well be reader. Mr. Lafone says I have a silver tone in my voice, and our curate at home once told me----” “Tush, the celebrated Miss Burney hath qualifications, child, which you in your foolishness fail to appreciate.” “Yet she is but a music teacher’s daughter, Madam,” said Molly with a mighty sigh. She dropped her white eyelids and turned a green glint on my Lord, and sighed again. “Or if not actually about her Majesty--who am I, indeed, to aspire to that Presence?--some office about yourself, dear Lady Kilcroney. I would be your secretary, your Lady-in-waiting, your devoted attendant!” “This is folly,” cried Kitty. “I am by no means appointed to my Lady Flo’s post, and if I were--well, to be frank with you, Lafone, since you like frankness so much--you are the last person in the world I should ever be instrumental in bringing to court. Heavens!” cried Kitty, gazing upwards at the low ceiling, as if she saw through it into the celestial regions. “What discretion, what faultless propriety of conduct, what a delicate sense of responsibility, what a blameless record should be demanded of one who would enter that sacred circle!...” (It was the glint of her visitor’s green eye at my Lord which gave this stern decision to Kitty’s tones.)