'Just put it to Gladys, Mina. If she ever heard the word flirtation, I am positive she doesn't know what it means.'
'Oh, fiddle-de-dee!—every woman, unless she is a fool, knows intuitively what flirtation means, and can put it in practice. But it struck me last night that Aunt Margaret rather encouraged George to pay attention to Gladys. Of course it was quite marked.'
'Why should she encourage it?' asked Clara, with a slight inflection of huskiness in her voice.
'Clara, really you are too obtuse, or pretend to be. Of course it would be a fine thing for them. She belongs to an old Ayrshire family, and poor Aunt Margaret adores lineage. If she could with any effrontery assume it herself, she would; but, alas! everybody knows where the Fordyces came from. They'll angle for our dear little ward this summer, and bait the hook with gold.'
'Really, you are vulgar, Mina,' said Clara a trifle coldly, and, bending over an open trunk, busied herself with some of the trifles in the tray. 'We are sure to forget a thousand things. Do you think everything is here which ought to go?' she said, deliberately changing the subject.
'Oh, I don't know. We shall be glad of any excuse to come up in a week. If it is fearfully slow I'm coming back to keep Leonard company. Well, I suppose we must make haste. The cabs will be here directly.'
'Not till after breakfast, surely. There is the gong. Are you ready?'
'Yes; just put in this stud for me, like a dear. How elegant you look, just as if you had stepped from a bandbox. How do you manage to be so tidy, and yet always so graceful? When I am tidy I am stiff as a poker.'
Clara laughed, and, having fastened the refractory collar-button, bent her stately head, and gave her sister a kiss.
'Don't attempt to be too tidy, it will spoil your individuality.'