"And we'll stay all the evening?" begged Narcissus.
"What for not? I ain't in the way of doing business nor pleasure shilly-shally like. See you're both ready. And you, too, if you'll come—" dubiously, to his wife.
"Likely I should, when it's all you want to get away with the girls," she retorted.
Plunkett might have replied that this was by no means all he wanted. He honestly wished for his wife too, only under the condition that she would don a good-tempered face for the occasion. If she must needs wear a mask of acidity, he would undoubtedly prefer her absence to her presence. But an explanation of this sort is difficult to make. Plunkett considered so long what to say that he ended by saying nothing.
"I'm glad mother ain't going; she'd spoil it all," Narcissus said later in the day, when she and Marigold had run upstairs to change their dresses. "She looks so cross about everything."
"I'm glad, too . . . But I wonder if she wouldn't like it, really," debated Marigold. "I mean, I wonder if we oughtn't to ask her again."
"Why, Marigold! What do you mean? Wouldn't you rather have father to ourselves? We shall have lots of fun with him; and if she's there, she'll just spoil everything. She'll want to go where we don't like, and she'll hurry us home before we've half done."
"Father 'll take care about that. He won't let us be hurried home. I'm only thinking—doesn't it seem rather dull for her being left behind, if she does really want to go?"
"Why doesn't she say so, then?"
"I suppose she thinks we don't want her."