Mrs. Wyburn liked to excite Millie's interest, and yet somehow loathed her sympathy.
"Yes; do you know, I really should have the ceiling painted, if I were you," she said, as if it were a new idea. "Otherwise your house is looking so nice—quite charming. I think it such an excellent plan not to have flowers in the windows, only ever-greens."
"So glad you think so. It is rather a good arrangement, because, you see, they always look exactly the same all the year round."
"That they certainly do—and nevergreens would be a better name for them," spitefully said Mrs. Wyburn to herself as she drove off.
"What a tiresome mood Isabella was in to-day," said Miss Westbury to herself. "I must go and see Jane Totness and tell her what she said.... Ceiling, indeed! She was nasty!"
CHAPTER XX
A PROPOSAL
Miss Luscombe was looking out of the window, looking up to the street, waiting. At last she saw from her basement (the "tank," as her friends called it) a glimpse on the pavement of a pair of feet that she knew. They were the feet of Mr. John Ryland Rathbone. She hastened to prepare herself for his visit.