Before any more could be said Janet opened the door, saying, “Mother, Emma wants to see you.”
“Oh! I forgot,” cried Carey, hurrying off, while Janet came forward to the guest in her grown-up way, and asked—
“Have you been to the Water-Colour Exhibition, Miss Ogilvie?”
“Yes; Mr. Acton took me one Saturday afternoon.”
“Oh! then he would be sure to show you Nita Ray’s picture. I want so much to know how it strikes people.”
And Janet had plunged into a regular conversation about exhibitions, pictures, artists, concerts, lectures, &c., before her mother came back, talking with all the eagerness of an exile about her native country. As a governess in her school-room, Miss Ogilvie had had little more than a key-hole view of all these things; but then what she had seen and heard had been chiefly through the Actons, and thus coincided with Janet’s own side of the world, and they were in full discussion when Caroline came back.
“There, I’ve disposed of the butcher and baker!” she said. “Now we can be comfortable again.”
Mary expected Janet to repair to her own lessons, or to listen to those scales which Babie might be heard from a distance playing; but she only appealed to her mother about some picture of last year, and sat down to her drawing, while the conversation on pictures and books continued in animated style. So far from sending her away, Mary fancied that Carey was rather glad to keep to surface matters, and to be prevented from another outbreak of feeling.
The next interruption was from the children, each armed with a pile of open books on the top of a slate. Carey begged Mary to wait, and went outside the window with them, sitting down under a tree whence the murmured sounds of repetition could be heard, lasting about twenty minutes between the two, and then she returned, the little ones jumping on each side of her, Armine begging that Miss Ogilvie would come and see the museum, and Barbara saying that Jock wanted to help to show it off.
“Well, run now and put your own corners tidy,” suggested their mother. “If Jock does not stay in the playground, he will come back in a quarter of an hour.”