"I say!" exclaimed Mollie, "would you like to fish?"
I thought the suggestion a good one. I wanted to get some information out of Mollie, and I could not expect a child of her age to sit down in a chair and talk, even if the servants should permit us to do so undisturbed.
"I'll go and ask Sir Herbert to get us some worms and rods," she said, and ran off on her active black-stockinged legs.
She came back presently with the under-gardener, who carried a couple of rods and a tin of bait, and looked at me a little suspiciously as he said: "Now, Mollie, if you catch anything, you've got to eat it. There's to be no throwing back of fish into the pond."
Mollie promised that we would eat anything that we might catch, and Sir Herbert went back to his work.
When we were fairly settled, watching our floats, I said: "This is rather jolly, isn't it? Do your cousins, who are poor, have such a good time as you do?"
"Oh, much better," she replied. "They can go and fish in the parks if they want to, with their schoolfellows. I wish mother would let me go to school. Tom does, and I don't see why I shouldn't."
"But you can have your friends to play with you here, can't you?"
"I do sometimes. But they are not allowed to come very often; their mothers don't like it."
"Why not?"