However, Lady Peacock was rather fond
of Clarence, and entertained him with schemes for improving Chantry
House when it should have descended to Griffith. The mullion rooms
were her special aversion, and were all to be swept away, together
with the vaultings and the ruin--'enough to give one the blues, if
there were nothing else,' she averred.
We really felt it to the credit of our country that Sir George
Eastwood sent an invitation to an early dance to please his young
daughters; and for this our visitors prolonged their stay. My
mother made Clarence go, that she might have some one to take care
of her and Emily, since Griff was sure to be absorbed by his lady.
Emily had not been to a ball since those gay days in London with
Ellen. She shrank back from the contrast, and would have begged
off; but she was told that she must submit; and though she said she
felt immeasurably older than at that happy time, I believe she was
not above being pleased with the pale pink satin dress and wreath of
white jessamine, which my father presented to her, and in which,
according to Martyn, she beat 'Griff's bird all to shivers.'
Clarence had grown much less bashful and embarrassed since the Tooke
affair had given him a kind of position and a sense of not being a
general disgrace. He really was younger in some ways at five-and-
twenty than at eighteen; he enjoyed dancing, and especially enjoyed
the compliments upon our sister, whom in our usual fashion we viewed
as the belle of the ball.
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