But I haven’t been allowed a minute of it alone.
The girls fluttered into my room almost as soon as I came up; brimful of sympathy, but not sympathetic enough to keep themselves from laughter.
“Poor dear Nancy! Wasn’t it awful?”
“Didn’t I tell you Uncle Albert was a terror? But you don’t think he really talks like me, Nancy, do you? Billy will say he does!”
“Theo! He can easily hear you from his room, and the window’s open. Oh, I do hope that when I’m engaged my young man won’t have quite such loud relations!”
“Better than having deceitful whispery voices and saying horrid things in them about you behind your back,” retorted Theo. “And anyhow, Uncle Albert did like her!”
“Yes,” said Blanche, deprecatingly, “but isn’t it nearly as terrible as if he disapproved?”
“It’s worse,” I decided to myself as I dressed for dinner, in my white, to please Theo, who apparently has some mysterious child’s reason for wanting me to wear that particular frock to-night. “Even if one were madly in love, a relation like that would be quite enough to make one wonder if it were worth it! Yes! Even if one were really engaged to be married to a man—the man Mr. Waters would ‘pity,’ one would break it off rather than put up with such an uncle-in-law. Well! Thank goodness I’m spared that at all events! I hope Uncle Albert won’t pay many of his visits of inspection during the next year. One or two ought to be enough for him, and I’ve taken the plunge now,” thought I, “and got it over. He can’t go on being much more awful at dinner!”