Free Friendship and Folly: The Merriweather Chronicles Book I by Meredith Allady Page B

happiness to women, who would otherwise be troubled by pernicious suitors.”
    “However,” she continued, ignoring this, “my gratitude would be tenfold if you would consult my wishes before you begin withering invitations for me. There have been gentlemen whose requests I would have been pleased to grant, had you ever allowed them to see the light of day.”
    As Clive appeared to be genuinely puzzled by this announcement, after a moment Julia offered an example: Lord Rocksham.
    “Lord Rocksham!” Incredulity and revulsion resounded in every syllable. “The man is a shameless fribble!”
    Julia conceded the irrefutable, but said that “his probable fribbility” did not concern her; his kinship with the Spenhopes did, and she would not willingly have him offended.
    Clive replied that he had understood her to say that he had already done so; and he looked, as he said it, rather as the cat which, having already eaten the parrot, knows that it cannot be made to return it.
    “No,” said Julia. “You did your best, I am sure, but his lordship is too good-natured, and you are too inept at discourtesy to really bring the thing off at the first attempt.”
    Clive, not unnaturally, took umbrage at this horrid imputation. “I beseech you,” cried he, “do me this courteous office, as to know of the fellow what my lack of offence to him is: it is something of my negligence, nothing of my purpose.”
    “Pray, sir, put your sword up, if you please,” said Julia, falling in with his play. “For he is a gentleman of noble parentage, of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train’d, stuff’d, as they say, with honourable parts.”
    “O, he’s a lovely gentleman!” came the retort. “Romeo’s a dishclout to him. Good sister, wrong me not, nor wrong yourself, to make me brother to a tea-swigging, snuff-mad, hazelnut!”
    Ann and Julia smiled at this ridiculously apt description, but Kitty did not, and Julia, seeing this, begged Clive to quit his nonsense, admit that there was not the least harm in his lordship, and promise to desist from any further efforts to affront him.
    But Clive missed the glances directing him to take heed of Kitty’s troubled face, and replied severely, “As well the fear of harm, as harm apparent, in my opinion, ought to be prevented. He’s a rank weed, and we must root him out. But fear not--I will no further offend him than becomes me for your good.”
    “Peace, wilful boy!” whispered Ann, whose own store of quotations tended toward very short, pithy adjurations; while Julia turned from him in half-vexed amusement, and sought, still somewhat entangled in Shakespearean cadence, to reassure Kitty, who was now thoroughly alarmed: “Darling, do not heed him. Clive’s tongue but curvets unseasonably! Lord Rocksham is no suitor of mine.”
    This was no more than the truth. That distinctive gentleman paid desultory court to Julia merely to be fashionable. At the time he was enamored of the Spenhope’s flirtatious neighbor, who, according to Marianne, was the sort to look “beautifully cross” if she did not have a man near her, while scorning the devoted Rocksham, and complaining to friends how tiresome she found it to be obliged to dance with him more than once in an evening.
    It was not to be expected, however, that Kitty would be easily persuaded that any man could prefer such a one to her beloved Julia, and it took many days, an abject disavowal from a repentant Clive, and the confirmation of Mrs. Spenhope, before Kitty could be brought to believe it so, and to witness his arrival at Merrion House with anything like her former moderate anxiety.
    **

Chapter X

    There is scarcely a family, that does not have in it persons which the other members are apt to regard with less than delight, and to be persuaded that, on the whole, it might have been better for family relations, had these persons been kidnapped at birth, smuggled aboard a merchantman, and shipped to one of the more obscure