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Updated: June 22, 2025
Whereat, Sir Morton's fury became so excessive that he actually shut up Badsworth Hall and went away for a whole year, greatly to the relief of the editor of the 'Riversford Gazette, who was able to dismiss him with a comfortable paragraph, thus: "Sir Morton Pippitt has left Badsworth Hall for a tour round the world. Miss Pippitt accompanies her distinguished father."
It was the merest trifle that Sir Morton Pippitt should have brought his 'distinguished guests, including Marius Longford, to see John Walden's church and also have taken him to visit Maryllia in her own home; it was equally trifling that Longford, improving on the knightly Bone-Melter's acquaintance, should have chosen to import Lord Roxmouth into the neighbourhood through the convenient precincts of Badsworth Hall; it was a trifle that Maryllia should have actually believed in the good faith of two women who had formerly entertained her at their own houses and whose hospitality she was anxious to return; and it was a trifle that John Walden should, so to speak, have made a conventionally social 'slip' in his protest against smoking women; but there the trifles stopped.
"It will soon be over now," said Cicely, consolingly, one afternoon in the last week of Maryllia's entertaining "And oh, how glad we shall be when everybody has gone!" "There's one person who won't go, I'm afraid!" said Maryllia. "Roxmouth? Well, even HE can't stay at Badsworth Hall for ever!" "No, but he can stay as long as he likes, long enough to work mischief.
He was quite in his element, as he handed out the beautiful Lady Beaulyon from the motor-car, and expressed his admiration for her looks in no unmeasured terms, he felt himself to be almost an actual Badsworth, of Badsworth Hall, as he patted Lord Charlemont familiarly on the shoulder, and called him 'My dear boy! As he greeted Maryllia, he smiled at her knowingly.
"I see!" and Maryllia lifted her little head with an unconscious gesture, implying pride, or disdain, or both, as she passed with the other guests into the Badsworth Hall drawing-room; "The country is so delightful at this time of year!" She moved on. Lord Roxmouth stroked down his fair moustache to hide a smile, and quietly followed her.
Then there was Bob Keeley, more or less breathless with excitement, having just got back again from Badsworth Hall, his friend the butcher boy having driven him to and from that place 'in a jiffy' as he afterwards described it, and there was a very sparkling, smiling, vivacious little person of about fifteen, in a lilac cotton frock, who wore a wreath of laburnum on her black curls, no other than Kitty Spruce, generally alluded to in the village as 'Bob Keeley's gel'; and standing near Baby Hippolyta, or 'Ipsie, was the acknowledged young beauty of the place, Susie Prescott, a slip of a lass with a fair Madonna-like face, long chestnut curls and great, dark, soft eyes like pansies filled with dew.
"It's all so lonely!" she murmured "I felt just a little dull before Eva Beaulyon and the others came, but it's ever so much duller with them than without them!" That afternoon, in compliance with a particularly pressing request from Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay, she accompanied a party of her guests to Badsworth, driving thither in Lord Charlemont's motor.
Sir Morton Pippitt still occasionally sends me a spluttering note of information as to something you have, or have not done, to the church on which you have spent the greater part of your personal fortune; and Leveson, the minister at Badsworth, appears to think that I should assist him by heading a subscription list to obtain funds for the purpose of making his church as perfect a gem of architecture as yours.
She had two watch- dogs besides her canine friend, Plato, and these were Cicely and Julian Adderley. Cicely had pressed the 'moon calf' into her service, and had told him just as much as she thought proper concerning Roxmouth and his persecution of her friend and patroness. "Go as often as you can to Badsworth Hall," she commanded him "and find out all their movements there.
He turned away, and Bob Keeley made as rapid a departure as was consistent with the deep respect he felt for the 'Passon, having extracted a promise from the butcher boy of the village, who was a friend of his, that if he were 'quick about it, he would get a drive up to Badsworth and back again in the butcher's cart going there for orders, instead of tramping it.
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