If you look out for anything long beforehand, it is apt to pall on the palate when it arrives within your reach.

"Unlooked-for blessings" are generally twice as grateful as those which you are led to expect--so, at least, I have found them.
On my return home from a walk in the evening, I found a little note of invitation awaiting me, in which Miss Pimpernell requested me to come round to the vicarage precisely at eight, "dressed all in my best," like the impassioned lover of "Sally in our Alley," as she "expected a few friends." She added in a postscript, underlined with one of her characteristic dashes, that _Miss Clyde_ would be there, if that would be any further inducement for me.
Oh Miss Pimpernell, you machiavellian old lady! I would not have thought you could have practised such great dissimulation.

Would Min's presence be any further inducement to me! Wouldn't it?
Oh, dear no, certainly not! In ten minutes' time I was dressed en regle and at the vicarage.
It was quite a nice little party.

Not one too many, and not a single discordant element.

Old ladies and gentlemen seemed to have been rigidly tabooed, with the exception, naturally, of our host and hostess, the vicar and his sister; for Lady Dasher, owing to some fortunate conjuncture of circumstances, was unable to come: Miss Spight was busy at home, entertaining an elderly relative who had suddenly thrown herself on her hospitality; while Mr Mawley was at Oxford enjoying the season with sundry dogmatic Fellows of his own calibre.