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hair – Mrs Venables had no great opinion of Miss Rebecca – had said to make Mr Happerton laugh so heartily.
     
    *
     
    Such was Mr Happerton’s enthusiasm for his picture, which he confessed to having paid twenty guineas for that morning at a dealer’s in Bond Street, that during the luncheon it was taken out and exhibited to the guests, handed round among them with the same finesse that the pastrycook’s men handed round the dessert and eventually propped up against the epergne so that none of Mrs Venables’ friends could have avoided it even had they wanted to.
    Mrs Venables said that she knew nothing of horses, although her husband, had he been present, would certainly have given an opinion, but that it looked a nice sort of animal.
    Captain Powell said that, demmy, he had seen him run at Northampton – long odds, but then they knew nothing of horses in Northamptonshire – and, demmy, he was the sweetest little horse you ever saw.
    Mr Chaff, the member for Risborough, and a parliamentary crony of Mr Venables, said that there was some mystery about the horse, that it had been found in a field, surrendered up as part of a debt or some such, and the whole thing was deuced queer.
    Captain Powell said that someone should enter him for the Derby, demmy, and if they did, he would back him by Jove.
    Mrs Venables, thinking the company was growing tired of horse racing, assumed her sweetest smile and said that no doubt Mr Happerton’s purchase of the watercolour was only a preliminary to purchase of the animal itself.
    Miss Gresham, showing a greater animation of spirit than anyone in the room had previously thought her capable of, said that it was a beautiful horse and she hoped Mr Happerton could soon call it his own.
    And Mr Happerton, seeing her framed between the looming figure of the pastrycook’s man as he took away the dessert plates and Captain Powell’s titanic jaw as he bent forward to make some further remark about horse racing in Northamptonshire, thought that if there were one finer thing than to watch Tiberius flying around Tattenham Corner, with the ragtag of the Derby in his wake, it would be Miss Rebecca’s soft arm in his as he stepped across the Epsom paddock.
     
    *
     
    ‘I declare I never enjoyed myself quite so much,’ Harriet said, as they made their way back to Eccleston Square.
    ‘Mrs Venables seems to know a very queer set of people. I am sure that Captain Powell is the most odious man I ever met. I don’t believe he ever went anywhere near that Maharani of Cawnpore in the Mutiny that he is always talking about. But of course he smiles at you in the park, so I had better be silent.’
    ‘I suppose you are cross because you were not sat next to Mr Happerton,’ Harriet suggested.
    ‘There are things to make me cross beyond sitting next to Mr Happerton. You are a goose, Harriet, to say such things.’
    And Harriet, like Mr Happerton half an hour since, thought that she could not make her cousin out.

An Addition to the Family
     
The gentleman who brings an acknowledgment of his preference to a young lady’s father must not be surprised if he is received with no great cordiality. Inadequate birth, dress, demeanour, income – all these things may prejudice the opinion of a paterfamilias, vigilant upon his hearth-rug, in a way that would be very disquieting should the precise dimensions of the gentleman’s falling short ever be publicly conveyed. What is needed on these occasions is good nature, persistence and pertinacity, and the constant recollection that faint heart ne’er won fair lady …
    A New Etiquette: Mrs Carmody’s Book of Genteel Behaviour (1861)
     
    A WEEK HAD PASSED since Mrs Venables’ luncheon and Mr Happerton sat in an upper room of the Blue Riband Club smoking a cigar. The chamber in which he found himself was known as the library, and did in fact contain two or three newspapers laid out on a brass salver and two or three dozen books piled up anyhow on a single