Now, if the Dudley mansion-house people would only
come,--that was the great point.
"Here's a note for us, Elsie," said her father, as they sat round the
breakfast-table. "Mrs. Rowens wants us all to come to tea."
It was one of "Elsie's days," as old Sophy called them. The light in her
eyes was still, but very bright. She looked up so full of perverse and
wilful impulses, that Dick knew he could make her go with him and her
father. He had his own motives for bringing her to this
determination,--and his own way of setting about it.
"I don't want to go," he said. "What do you say, uncle?"
"To tell the truth, Richard, I don't mach fancy the Major's widow. I
don't like to see her weeds flowering out quite so strong. I suppose you
don't care about going, Elsie?"
Elsie looked up in her father's face with an expression which he knew but
too well. She was just in the state which the plain sort of people call
"contrary," when they have to deal with it in animals. She would insist
on going to that tea-party; he knew it just as well before she spoke as
after she had spoken.
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