Belinda showed her teeth, beautifully white if a trifle too large, in the frankest grin.
"'Playing the organ' isn't slang, Mater."
Mrs. Horton returned her look severely.
"It's the way you say things that make them sound like slang—isn't it, Grace?" she ended, appealing to her sister.
Mrs. Loring smiled very kindly.
"It's the fashion to be slangy nowadays, Eleanor."
Belinda's eyes shot garnet sparkles at her mother. She patted Mrs. Loring's blue batiste skirt approvingly with her racquet.
"That's one for you, Mater!" she cried joyously, then to Mrs. Loring, "You're always perfectly bully to me, Aunty Grace!"
The idea of applying the term "bully" to that over-refined, softly majestic figure in its cane chair would have abashed any one less daring than Belinda. But Mrs. Loring seemed not to mind in the least. She knew that Belinda was "bad form." Belinda knew it herself. "Some people are born 'bad form,'" she used to say with her wide, lovely grin. "That's me."
In tapping her aunt's skirt with her racquet, she had dislodged Morris's letter. It slipped to the floor beside her, and lifting it to hand it back, she recognised his writing.