“I suppose,” said Mrs. Dalyell tartly, “that Mr. Wedderburn thinks that quite appropriate. Gentlemen always think a girl’s impertinence is amusing when it’s directed against her mother; but you ought to know better, Susie, than to hold me up to ridicule. I am sure, whatever else I may be, I have been a careful mother to you.” “Oh, mamma! As if I meant anything like that,” cried Susie petulantly, flinging herself upon her mother. “I only mean you don’t care now. It’s nothing to you to think of Lucy dancing all night in billows of tulle, like the girls in the novels, and me going to bed at ten o’clock. They will only just have begun then. And to think they should have asked Fred! and me Lucy’s greatest friend and contemporaneous, and friends with Davie all my life--and that they never thought of asking me--never even tried! Perhaps if they had asked me--and it’s such an opportunity and such old friends--you would have let me go.” “I’ll tell you what, Susie,” said Fred, who had just come in; “I’ll ride over to-morrow morning first thing and ask them to ask you. I dare say they will for my sake.” Susie looked at him for a moment with a flush of hope, and then her face clouded. “For your sake!” she said, with a sister’s frank contempt. “If it’s only for your sake, I’ll stay at home. I am not a nobody like that. I’m Lucy Scrymgeour’s oldest friend. If she doesn’t of her own account--and Davie too,” cried the girl with an access of indignation--“it’s more than any one can bear!” “I would never speak to one of them again,” said Alice, “if it was me.” “And what good would that do?” cried Susie, with the tear still in her eye, turning upon her sister. “Lose the ball and a friend too! I suppose they had some reason. Perhaps there were too many girls already--else why should they ask Fred? Or, perhaps---- Yes, I’ll speak to Lucy again, the first time I see her; but I shall be very dignified, and pretend that I didn’t care a bit.” “But you couldn’t if you tried; dignified, my dear--that would be rather difficult.” “Is there anything in the paper, Pat?” said Mr. Dalyell. “Not much. But it’s ill talking between a full man and a fasting. I’ve seen what there is, and you’ve not. Here’s the _Times_. Munro’s in for that place in the North.” “Bless my soul! and you call that nothing? Another firebrand, and as good as two lost in our majority. That’s bad, Pat; that’s bad.” “I never think anything of a bye-election. They’re all in the nature of accidents. There’s a good speech of Gladstone’s at one of the Lancaster towns, and John Bright flaming on the side of peace like a house on fire.” “And he says there’s nothing in the paper!” said Mr. Dalyell, as he dropped into an easy-chair in his turn with the great broad-sheet of the _Times_ in his hand.