“O no, grandmamma, she is quite strong, very strong indeed.”
“I am sure she is hoarse this morning,” proceeded Mrs. Langford; “I shall speak to her mamma.”
“O don’t, pray, grandmamma; she would be so disappointed. And what would Mr. Franklin do?”
“O very well, I promise you, as he has done before,” said Mrs. Langford, hastening off to the drawing-room, while her granddaughter darted upstairs to hurry Henrietta out of the house before a prohibition could arrive. It was what Henrietta had too often assisted Fred in doing to have many scruples, besides which she knew how grieved her mamma would be to be obliged to stop her, and how glad to find her safe out of reach; so she let her cousin heap on shawls, fur cuffs, and boas in a far less leisurely and discriminating manner than was usual with her.
“It would be absolute sneaking (to use an elegant word), I suppose,” said Beatrice, “to go down the back stairs.”
“True,” said Henrietta, “we will even take the bull by the horns.”
“And trust to our heels,” said Beatrice, stealthily opening the door; “the coast is clear, and I know both your mamma and my papa will not stop us if they can help it. One, two, three, and away!”
Off they flew, down the stairs, across the hall, and up the long green walk, before they ventured to stop for Henrietta to put on her gloves, and take up the boa that was dragging behind her like a huge serpent. And after all, there was no need for their flight; they might have gone openly and with clear consciences, had they but properly and submissively waited the decision of their elders. Mr. Geoffrey Langford, who did not know how ill his daughter had been behaving, would have been very sorry to interfere with the plan, and easily reconciled his mother to it, in his own cheerful pleasant way. Indeed her opposition had been entirely caused by Beatrice herself; she had not once thought of objecting when it had been first mentioned the evening before, and had not Beatrice not first fidgeted and then argued, would only have regarded it as a pleasant way of occupying their morning.
“I could scold you, Miss Drone,” said Beatrice when the two girls had set themselves to rights, and recovered breath; “it was all the fault of your dawdling.”
“Well, perhaps it was,” said Henrietta, “but you know I could not see grandmamma lifting those flower-pots without offering to help her.”