teach herself to shake hands with Lord Lufton without a quiver, and would be prepared to like his wife amazingly—unless, indeed, that wife should be Griselda Grantly. Such were her resolutions; but, at the end of the first week, they were broken into shivers and scattered to the winds.
They had been sitting in the house together the whole of one wet day; and as Mark was to dine in Barchester with the dean, they had had dinner early, eating with the children almost in their laps. It is so that ladies do when their husbands leave them to themselves. It was getting dusk toward evening, and they were still sitting in the drawing-room, the children now having retired, when Mrs. Robarts, for the fifth time since her visit to Hogglestock, began to express her wish that she could do some good to the Crawleys—to Grace Crawley in particular, who, standing up there at her father's elbow, learning Greek irregular verbs, had appeared to Mrs. Robarts to be an especial object of pity.
"I don't know how to set about it," said Mrs. Robarts.
Now any allusion to that visit to Hogglestock always drove Lucy's mind back to the consideration of the subject which had most occupied it at the time. She at such moments remembered how she had beaten Puck, and how, in her half bantering but still too serious manner, she had apologized for doing so, and had explained the reason, and therefore she did not interest herself about Grace Crawley as vividly as she should have done.
"No, one never does," she said.
"I was thinking about it all that day as I drove home," said Fanny. " The difficulty is this: What can we do with her?"
"Exactly," said Lucy, remembering the very point of the road at which she had declared that she did like Lord Lufton very much.
"If we could have her here for a month or so, and then send her to school—but I know Mr. Crawley would not allow us to pay for her schooling."
"I don't think he would," said Lucy, with her thoughts far removed from Mr. Crawley and his daughter Grace.
"And then we should not know what to do with her—should we?"
"No, you would not."
