"I like the _nouveaux riches_ for that," said Phil (he did not go wrong in his French, which was a great consolation to Elinor), "they like to have the best of everything. Your poor swell has to take what he can get, but the _parvenu's_ the man in these days; and then there was a dog-cart, which she pronounced to be from the station, but which turned out to be the butcher, or the baker, or the candle-stick maker----" "It is really too far off to make sure of anything, except white horses." "Ah, there's no mistaking them. I see something sweeping along, but that's a country wagon, I suppose. It gives me a great deal of diversion to see the people on the road--which perhaps you will think a vulgar amusement." "Not at all," said Mrs. Dennistoun, politely, but she thought within herself how empty the brain must be which sought diversion from the distant carriages passing two miles off: to be sure across the combe, as the crow flies, it was not a quarter part so far as that. "Phil thinks some one may possibly come to him on business--to explain things," said Elinor, anxious on her part to make it clear that it was not out of mere vacancy that her lover had watched so closely the carriages on the road. "Unfortunately, there is something like a smash," he said; "they'll keep it out of the papers if they can, but you may see it in the papers; the manager has run away, and there's a question about some books. I don't suppose you would understand--they may come to me here about it, or they may wait till I go back to town." "I thought you were going to Ireland, Phil." "So I shall, probably, just for three days--to fill up the time. One wants to be doing something to keep one's self down. You can't keep quiet and behave yourself when you are going to be married in a week: unless you're a little chit of a girl without any feelings," he said with a laugh. And Elinor laughed too; while Mrs. Dennistoun sat as grave as a judge at the head of the table. But Phil was not daunted by her serious face: so long as the road was quite clear he had all the appearance of a perfectly easy mind. "We have been talking about literature," he said. "I am a stupid fellow, as perhaps you know, for that sort of thing. But Nell is to indoctrinate me. We mean to take a big box of books, and I'm to be made to read poetry and all sorts of fine things in my honeymoon." "That is a new idea," said Mrs. Dennistoun. "I thought Elinor meant to give up reading, on the other hand, to make things square." There was a little breath of a protest from Elinor. "Oh, mamma!" but she left the talk (he could do it so much better) in Compton's hand. "I expect to figure as a sort of prodigy in my family," he said; "we're not bookish. The Jew goes in for French novels, but I don't intend to let Nell touch them, so you may be easy in your mind." "I have no doubt Lady Mariamne makes a good selection," said Mrs. Dennistoun.