"Yes, you were almost as bad. You've left his house, but you come up every day to see that his sheets are properly aired, and send out in the middle of dinner to see whether his hot water bottle is filled."
"Oh, Aunt Mary!"
"Well, that's the impression you give everybody. You made him look like an elderly man, when if you'd let him alone he'd have seemed quite like a young one. How would you have liked it yourselves, if you'd been in Ella's place? She's only a year or two older than you. Probably what put her off was that she was afraid you'd be calling her 'Mummy darling!'"
"Oh, it was she that was put off!" said Caroline. "You said at first that it was Dad, because we turned up our noses at it."
"I've no patience with you," concluded Lady Grafton, ignoring this.
"No, you don't seem to have much, darling," said Beatrix sweetly. "You're all wrong though. Caroline and I have been talking it over. We think that she was almost ready to marry him then. She behaved to us as if she were. We can't tell you how, but we both felt the same about it. She wanted to know how we should take it, and we let her know that we should be pleased. We understood each other perfectly, though not a word was said directly."
"I wish I'd said a word, directly. It only wanted that. One is afraid of interfering, and then one wakes up to find everything has gone wrong."
"If only you'd interfered with us all a little more, darling, how much happier we should have been," said Beatrix. "What Caroline and I think is that she never could quite make up her mind, and he wouldn't say anything till he saw that she had."
"That's how it's supposed to have happened with you, isn't it? It isn't every man who expects the woman he's in love with to fall down and cuddle his boots."
"Don't be tart, darling. It doesn't suit you, really, though you think it does."