intent on receiving our friends. Here is Lady Gammon. I must be civil to her."
"How propitious the weather is," said the high sheriffess, "and how gratified you must be, my lady, to see so many individuals about you in the plentitude of enjoyment."
There are persons, they belong to a certain social class, who always use a long word from the Latin when a short Anglo-Saxon one would do.
"What a superabundance of ministers, all, I perceive, of the Established Church; but really, considering the high sheriff was to be here, they might have come in hats, instead of what is vulgarly called wide-awakes. Do you know, my lady, what it is that I really want of you? Can you guess what the favour is that I am going to ask of you? No—I am sure you cannot. Sir Bosanquet and I had a discussion together at breakfast relative to the polarisation of light, and I said to Sir Bosanquet—" (within parenthesis be it noted that before the civil engineer was knighted, his wife always called him hub or hubby)—"I said to Sir Bosanquet, 'my dear, we will refer the matter to her ladyship who is a very learned lady, and she shall decide.'"
"I!" answered Lady Lamerton, "I really do not know. It has—that is—I believe it has—but really I have only the vaguest idea concerning it; it has to do with the breaking up of a ray into its prismatic colours."
"I knew it has to do with prismatic colours, and had nothing to do with polar bears. Polar bears are white."
"Thomson," said Lady Lamerton aside to a footman, "be so good as to send me Miss Inglett's maid—to me here, on the terrace."
A few minutes later the lady's-maid came to where my lady was standing; she held a salver with a three-cornered sealed note on it.
"Please, my lady, Thomson said your ladyship——"
