'this is really quite providential. Are they at Dunbude now?'

'No, mother. She writes from Wilton Place. They're up in town for
Lord Exmoor's gout, I know. I heard they were on Sunday.'

'Then I shall go and see Lady Exmoor this very morning about it.
It's exactly the right place for Ernest. A little good society
will get rid of all his nonsensical notions in a month or two. He's
lived too exclusively among his radical set at Oxford. And then
it'll be such a capital thing for him to be in the house continually
with Hilda; she's a girl of such excellent tone. I fancy--I'm not
quite sure, but I fancy--that Ernest has a decided taste for the
company of people, and even of young girls, who are not in Society.
He's so fond of that young man Oswald, who Herbert tells me is
positively the son of a grocer--yes, I'm sure he said a grocer!--and
it seems, from what Herbert writes me, that this Oswald has brought
a sister of his up this term from behind the counter, on purpose
to set her cap at Ernest. Now you boys have, unfortunately, no
sisters, and therefore you haven't seen as much of girls of a good
stamp--not daily and domestically I mean--as is desirable for you,
from the point of view of Society. But if Ernest can only be induced
to take this tutorship at the Exmoors', he'll have an opportunity
of meeting daily with a really nice girl, like Hilda; and though
of course it isn't likely that Hilda would take a fancy to her
brother's tutor--the Exmoors are such VERY conservative people
in matters of rank and wealth and family and so forth--quite
un-Christianly so, I consider--yet it can't fail to improve Ernest's
tone a great deal, and raise his standard of female society generally.
It's really a very distressing thought to me, Ronald, that all my
boys, except dear Herbert, should show such a marked preference for