Miss Grogram turned her spectacles right upon me, and I fancied that she nodded her head at me as a sort of answer to Miss Macmanus. The five pupils opened their mouths and eyes wider; but she of the broad back was nothing abashed. It would have been nothing to her had there been a dozen gentlemen in the room. “We just found a pair of black—.” The whole truth was told in the plainest possible language.
“Oh, Aunt Sally!” “Aunt Sally, how can you?” “Hold your tongue, Aunt Sally!”
“And then Miss Grogram just cut them up with her scissors,” continued Aunt Sally, not a whit abashed, “and gave us each a bit, only she took more than half for herself.” It was clear to me that there had been some quarrel, some delicious quarrel, between Aunt Sally and Miss Grogram. Through the whole adventure I had rather respected Aunt Sally. “She took more than half for herself,” continued Aunt Sally. “She kept all the—”
“Jemima,” said the elder Miss Macmanus, interrupting the speaker and addressing her sister, “it is time, I think, for the young ladies to retire. Will you be kind enough to see them to their rooms?” The five pupils thereupon rose from their seats—and courtesied. They then left the room in file, the younger Miss Macmanus showing them the way.
“But we haven’t done any harm, have we?” asked Mrs. Jones, with some tremulousness in her voice.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Miss Macmanus. “What I’m thinking of now is this;—to whom, I wonder, did the garments properly belong? Who had been the owner and wearer of them?”
“Why, General Chassé of course,” said Miss Grogram.
“They were the general’s,” repeated the two young ladies; blushing, however, as they alluded to the subject.
“Well, we thought they were the general’s, certainly; and a very excellent article they were,” said Mrs. Jones.
“Perhaps they were the butler’s?” said Aunt Sally. I certainly had not given her credit for so much sarcasm.