"Oh yes, we were very polite to him," said I. And then I grew very hot. Of course I knew I was bound to say that Captain Forrester had driven us home. I hoped mother would take it kindly, as she seemed well disposed towards him, but I did not feel perfectly sure.
"We asked him to come in, didn't we, Joyce?" added I, looking at her.
"Yes, we did," murmured my sister, bending very low over her plate.
"Asked him to come where?" asked mother.
"Why, here, to be sure," cried I, growing bolder. "He drove us home, you know."
Mother said nothing, for Deborah had just brought in the pudding, and she was always very discreet before servants at meal-times. But she closed her lips in a way that I knew, and her face assumed an aggrieved kind of expression that she only put on to me; when Joyce was in the wrong, she always scolded her quite frankly. There was silence until Deborah had left the room. She went out with a smile on her face which always drove me into a frenzy, for it meant to say, "You are in for it, and serve you right;" and I thought it was taking advantage of her position in the family to notice any differences that occurred between mother and the rest of us.
When Deborah had gone out, shutting the door rather noisily, mother laid down her knife and fork. She did not look at me at all, she looked at Joyce. That was generally the way she punished me.
"You don't mean to say, Joyce, that you allowed a strange gentleman to get into the trap before all the townsfolk!" said she. "You're the eldest—you ought to have known better."
I could not stand this. "It isn't Joyce's fault," said I, boldly; "I thought we were in luck's way when the gentleman offered to drive us. He knew the mare, and of course I felt that we were safe."