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It was very well for all parties that Roger was not 'sensitive, for, if he had been, there were times when it would have been hard to bear little spurts of domestic tyranny, by which his father strove to assert his power over both his sons. One of these occurred very soon after the night of the Hollingford charity-ball.
It was a charity-ball, for the benefit of the mistress of the very charity-school to which the little girl with the bruised hand belonged. "Do you know," said Henry to Forester, when they returned home, "that I have great hopes we shall be able to get justice done to the poor children? I hope the tyrannical schoolmistress may yet be punished.
She had enjoyed her waltzes even at that charity-ball at the Pavilion, to which she had gone so unwillingly. The March night was fine, but blustery, when Mrs. Tempest and her daughter started for the Southminster ball.
But in the days when Molly and Cynthia were young before railroads were, and before their consequences, the excursion-trains, which take every one up to London now-a-days, there to see their fill of gay crowds and fine dresses to go to an annual charity-ball, even though all thought of dancing had passed by years ago, and without any of the responsibilities of a chaperone, was a very allowable and favourite piece of dissipation to all the kindly old maids who thronged the country towns of England.
The Miss Brownings would have thought themselves sadly defrauded of the gayest event of the year, if anything had prevented their attending the charity-ball, and Miss Browning would have been indignant, Miss Phoebe aggrieved, had they not been asked to Ashcombe and Coreham, by friends at each place, who had, like them, gone through the dancing stage of life some five- and-twenty years before, but who liked still to haunt the scenes of their former enjoyment, and see a younger generation dance on 'regardless of their doom. They had come in one of the two sedan- chairs that yet lingered in use at Hollingford; such a night as this brought a regular harvest of gains to the two old men who, in what was called the 'town's livery, trotted backwards and forwards with their many loads of ladies and finery.
You know to-night it is a charity-ball, and papa said everybody danced with everybody, said Molly, in a pleading tone of voice; for she could not quite and entirely enjoy herself if she was out of harmony with any one. What reply Mrs. Gibson would have made to this speech cannot now be ascertained, for, before she could make reply, Mr.
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