"She was very impertinent, and then we found that the baby had run away. We could not find her anywhere, and she had got to the Bishop's room through the window. It seems that your boys had shown her the way. It seems rather hard that the Bishop of the diocese shouldn't be free from intrusion in his own palace. And he was very busy—just going off."
At mention of her boys a little tender smile crept into Mrs. Bethune's eyes. "He is always good to the boys," she said to the implied reproach.
"Good, yes—but that should prevent advantage being taken. And the baby has a temper," pursued Mrs. Lytchett. "She fought and screamed when I took her from his knee. She is evidently being brought up very badly indeed. I am going to see about it now. Do you think he will be back? I hear," in accents of disgust, "that he rides backwards and forwards on one of those horrid bicycles."
Mrs. Lytchett paused to wonder a little at the sudden flush suffusing Mrs. Bethune's face, but went on: "I hope he won't introduce these things into the Precincts, now we have kept them away so long. I should have thought they might very well be left to Blackton and such places."
"Even the Duchess rides," Mrs. Bethune said softly. She felt guiltily conscious that Marjorie and Charity, under Mr. Pelham's instructions, had been riding for some days past—not only in the Deanery garden as at first, but far away into the country.
"The Duchess is the Duchess," sharply. "She does and tolerates many things that seem to me a great pity."
Mr. Pelham had ridden home early that day, with the idea in his mind of taking his baby down to the Canons' Court, and himself consulting Mrs. Bethune about her. Marjorie had said, "Mother will know"; Charity had said, "Ask Mrs. Bethune, she is the nicest woman to consult"; and his own drawing in the direction where Marjorie might be found made him jump at the advice.
But he had found a tearful nurse and a belligerent baby; and he was just emerging from a lively interview in the study, where he had been told that, "if she couldn't dress as seemed fitting in such a house, as the attendant of Miss Pelham, not just like a common nurse, she would like to give a month's notice," when he met Mrs. Lytchett crossing the hall to the drawing-room.
"This is very kind of you," he began, conscious of an audible sniff and the angry rustle of skirts behind him; and before him, Mrs. Lytchett's tilted nose and stony eyes fixed in the same direction. He had a man's horror of a scene, and he glanced apprehensively at the turned-down corners of Mrs. Lytchett's mouth.