"Come, come!" said Lady Harriet, "I'm going to have my turn now.
We've had the complaint of a doctor's wife, now hear the moans of a
peer's daughter. Our house is so overrun with visitors! and literally
to-day I have come to you for a little solitude."
"Solitude!" exclaimed Mrs. Gibson. "Would you rather be alone?"
slightly aggrieved.
"No, you dear silly woman; my solitude requires a listener, to
whom I may say, 'How sweet is solitude!' But I am tired of the
responsibility of entertaining. Papa is so open-hearted, he asks
every friend he meets with to come and pay us a visit. Mamma is
really a great invalid, but she does not choose to give up her
reputation for good health, having always considered illness a want
of self-control. So she gets wearied and worried by a crowd of people
who are all of them open-mouthed for amusement of some kind; just
like a brood of fledglings in a nest; so I have to be parent-bird,
and pop morsels into their yellow leathery bills, to find them
swallowed down before I can think of where to find the next. Oh, it's
'entertaining' in the largest, literalist, dreariest sense of the
word. So I have told a few lies this morning, and come off here for
quietness and the comfort of complaining!"
Lady Harriet threw herself back in her chair, and yawned; Mrs. Gibson
took one of her ladyship's hands in a soft sympathizing manner, and
murmured,--
"Poor Lady Harriet!" and then she purred affectionately.
After a pause Lady Harriet started up and said--"I used to take you
as my arbiter of morals when I was a little girl. Tell me, do you
think it wrong to tell lies?"
"Oh, my dear! how can you ask such questions?--of course it is very
wrong,--very wicked indeed, I think I may say. But I know you were
only joking when you said you had told lies."
"No, indeed, I wasn't. I told as plump fat lies as you would wish
to hear. I said I 'was obliged to go into Hollingford on business,'
when the truth was there was no obligation in the matter, only an
insupportable desire of being free from my visitors for an hour or
two, and my only business was to come here, and yawn, and complain,
and lounge at my leisure. I really think I'm unhappy at having told a
story, as children express it."
"But, my dear Lady Harriet," said Mrs. Gibson, a little puzzled as to
the exact meaning of the words that were trembling on her tongue, "I
am sure you thought that you meant what you said, when you said it."