Daddy was frantic and thought that I was dying, and wired to Ross at Harrow to go to Hampstead at once, and that he would come up by the first train he could catch.
Ross was out, so he only got to the school half an hour before father. Meantime Aunt Amelia had been sent for, and I was in the head mistress's room being rowed when Ross was announced. He looked quite old as he came in and said, 'Is my sister still alive?'
He was so relieved when he saw me that he was just going to kiss me, but Aunt Amelia stopped him and said he'd better not.
'Have you got another cold?' he asked, 'but I'm not afraid of germs.'
Ross wouldn't sit down because I wasn't allowed to. I felt like a prisoner at the bar while he was told all my crimes from the beginning of time to 'this last disgraceful episode which could not be passed over.'
Ross could not see their point of view at all. When she told him about the scones he exclaimed,
'But if my sister was hungry surely——?' and she said, 'But is that any reason why your sister should leave the house in the middle of the night?' and Aunt Amelia remarked she did not know what my dear dead mother would say if she could know it.
My quick hurt then! I know it's awfully weak-minded to cry when you're in a row, but I couldn't stand that bit about mother. Ross seemed to get suddenly about seven feet high and his face went like a granite sphinx, and he put his arm round me and said, 'There darling,' several times.
'Oh, Ross,' I sobbed, 'I never left the house at all, I only ran out into the garden.'
'Of course, darling.'