The apartment was their usual family parlour, as it was then called, and therefore plainly, not to say meanly, furnished. Sir Marmaduke being a gentleman of ancient blood and considerable possessions, owned flocks and herds in plenty, fertile corn land under the plough, miles of pasturage over the hill. He kept good horses in his stable, fleet greyhounds in his kennel, and a cast of hawks in his mews, only surpassed by those of Sir George Hamilton; but he could not afford, he said, to waste his substance on "Frenchified luxuries," and this opprobrious term seemed to comprise all such vanities as carpets, curtains, couches, pictures, and ornaments of every description. For indoors, he argued, why, he didn't frequent that side of the house much himself, and what had been good enough for his mother must be good enough for his wife and the girls. When hard pressed, as be sure he was by these on the score of certain damask hanging and gorgeous carpets at Hamilton Hill, he would reply that Lady Hamilton was the sweetest woman in Europe, whereat his audience dissented, but that extravagance was her crying fault, only excusable on the ground of her foreign birth and education, and it couldn't go on. It could not go on! He should live to see his neighbour ruined, and sold up, but he should be sorry for it, prodigiously sorry! for Hamilton was a good fellow, very strong in the saddle, and took his bottle like a man!
He had spoken to the same effect just before he dropped asleep, and Dame Umpleby with her daughters had continued the subject in whispers till it died out of itself just as the far-off figure of Alice, coming direct to the house, afforded fresh food for conversation.
Margery being the youngest, saw the arrival some half-second before her sisters, and for one rapturous moment believed her dearest visions were realised, and little Red Riding Hood was coming to pay them a visit in person; but this young woman being about five years of age, and of imaginative temperament, was already accustomed to disillusions, and felt, therefore, more disgusted than surprised when her eldest sister Janet suggested the less startling supposition that it was Goody Round's grand-daughter on an errand for red salve and flannel, offering, at the same time, to procure those palliatives in person from the store-
