I laughed at her taking our club as the arbiter. She had infused a pretty irony into her question.
“It does, Miss Gladwin.” My answer maintained the ironical note.
“Then I will,” said she, with a highly delusive appearance of simplicity.
I could not quite make her out, but it came home to me that her secret resentment against Nettie Tyler was very bitter.
She spoke again in a moment: “A word from her would have gone a long way with father.”
“That’s all in the past, isn’t it?” I murmured soothingly.
“The past!” She seemed to throw doubt on the existence of such a thing.
The captain’s manly figure and the neat little shape in white and black were approaching us. The stress of feeling has to be great before it prevents sufferers from turning up to tea. Miss Gladwin glanced toward her advancing guests, smiled, and relighted the spirit-lamp under the kettle. I suppose I was looking thoughtful, for the next moment she said, “Rather late in the day to do anything? Is that what’s in your mind? Will they say that?”
“How can I tell? Your adherents say you’ve been like sisters.”
“I never had a sister younger and prettier than myself,” said she. She waved her hand to the new arrivals, now close on us. “I nearly had a stepmother like that, though,” she added.