“I don’t suppose aunt would mind,” said Anna, hesitatingly, her fair face flushing a little.
“Well,” said Delia, “you can run back and ask her. I’ll wait for you here. You will just have time.”
The bells of Saint Mary’s church began to sound as she spoke.
“Only you must go at once,” she added, “or we shall be too late.”
Still Anna hesitated. She hated the idea of asking Aunt Sarah, and seeing her mouth stiffen into that hard line which was so disagreeable; but it was almost as bad to face Delia, standing there, bolt upright, with her dark eyes fixed so unflinchingly upon her.
“I know,” she said, appealingly, “that Aunt Sarah has arranged for me to go to Dornton next week.”
“Oh,” said Delia, coldly.
“And,” pursued Anna, turning away from her companion and stooping to pick a flower, “she does like me, you know, to go to the service at Waverley with her. She says uncle prefers it.”
Delia’s glance rested for a moment in silence on the bending figure, with the pale yellow hair outspread on the shoulders gleaming in the sunshine; then she said in rather a hard voice:
“The fact is, I suppose, you don’t want to go. If so, you had better have said so at first.”