“A pretty modest request upon my word,” he indignantly exclaimed as they walked away. “To want to nail me to a card-table for the next two hours with herself and Dr. Grant, who are always quarrelling, and that poking old woman, who knows no more of whist than of algebra. I wish my good aunt would be a little less busy! And to ask me in such a way too! without ceremony, before them all, so as to leave me no possibility of refusing. That is what I dislike most. It raises my spleen more than anything, to have the pretence of being asked, of being given a choice, and at the same time addressed in such a way as to obligate! If I had not luckily thought of standing up with you I could not have got out of it. For when my aunt has got a fancy in her head, nothing can stop her.”

Chapter XIII

Unlike Lord Eastwind, the Honourable John Yates, the friend of Mr. Bertram, had not much to recommend him beyond habits of fashion and expense. And, being the younger son of a lord with a tolerable independence, Sir Thomas would probably have thought his introduction at Mansfield by no means desirable.

Mr. Bertram’s acquaintance with him had begun at Weymouth, where they had spent ten days together in the same society. And the friendship had been sealed by a common interest in idiotic schemes (such as Yates’s purchase of “Noah’s Rowboat,” as Tom so liked to mock it, completely discounting his own stupefying purchases) and perfected by Mr. Yates’s being invited to take Mansfield in his way, whenever he could.

Mr. Yates promised to come, and did so, rather earlier than had been expected. It was in consequence of the sudden breaking-up of a large party at the house of another friend. He came on the wings of disappointment, and with his head full of acting, for it had been a theatrical party. The play in which he had a part was within two days of performance, when the sudden death of one of the nearest connexions of the family had destroyed the scheme and dispersed the performers. They said it was a tragic wild animal attack, later disguised by the family as a health issue. Other more accurate rumors hinted it was indeed something quite more sinister—a horrendous, unbelievable, monstrous flying fowl, a duck of grandiose proportions, was observed in the local countryside, and there was report of horrifying attacks on moonless nights. . . .