"Jolly glad to get the chance," added Nancy. "We want to be sweet girls, but nobody has ever shown us how, before."
"Oh, you're all right," said Dick. "You needn't try to alter."
"Thank you, dear Dick," replied Joan. "You are blind to our faults, and it is very sweet of you. But there is room for improvement, and what with Miss Phipp to train our brains and sweet Sue Clinton to improve our manners, we feel we're getting a tremendous chance, don't we, Nancy?"
"Rather!" acquiesced Nancy; "the chance of a life time. We lie awake at night thinking about it."
Dick let them chatter on, and retired into his own thoughts. He would have liked to know how his father had taken the news of his coming, but was unwilling to question them, and he had never allowed them to exercise their critical faculties on their father before him; so they were not likely now to volunteer enlightenment. As the carriage rolled smoothly over the gravel of the drive through the park, he too, like his father, felt some discomfort at the thought of the meeting that lay before him.
Except that he had come out of his room and was waiting in the hall to receive his son, which had not been his usual custom, there was nothing in the Squire's greeting which could arouse comment amongst the servants who were present at it. This was always a great point at Kencote. "For God's sake, don't let the servants talk," was a phrase often on the Squire's lips; but he himself, in any crisis, provided them with more food for talk than anybody else.
"How are you, Dick?" he said, shaking hands. "We were beginning to think we should never see you again." (This was for the benefit of the servants.) "The meet's at Horley Wood to-morrow, but I'm not going out. I've got a touch of rheumatism. Come in and have a cup of tea."
They all went into the morning-room. "Mother, can't we begin to have tea downstairs now?" asked Joan. "We're quite old enough. We don't make messes any more."
Thus by a timely stroke a long-desired concession was won, for the only obstacle hitherto in the way had been the Squire's firm pronouncement that children ought to be kept in their proper place as long as they were children, and the proper place for Joan and Nancy at tea-time was the schoolroom. But he was now so greatly relieved at having them there to centre conversation on that he said with a strong laugh, taking Joan by the shoulder and drawing her to him, "Now, there's impudence for you! But I think we might let them off the chain now, mother, eh?"
"In holiday time," acquiesced Mrs. Clinton, "and on the days when they're not at lessons."