Meantime Mrs Carbonel and her sister were exclaiming in pity that this was a dear good girl, though Edmund shook his head over her surroundings.
“I wonder how to make her more comfortable,” said Dora. “She seemed so much pleased when I promised to bring her something to read.”
“I am afraid those Hewletts prey on her,” said Mary.
“And patronising her will prove a complicated affair!” said the captain.
He wanted them to come home at once, but on the way they met Nanny Barton, who began, with low curtsies, a lamentable story about her girls having no clothes, and she would certainly have extracted a shilling from Miss Carbonel if the captain had not been there.
“Never accept stories told on the spur of the moment,” he said.
Then Betsy Seddon and Tirzah Todd came along together, bending under heavy loads of broken branches for their fires. Tirzah smiled as usual, and showed her pretty teeth, but the captain looked after her, and said, “They have been tearing Mr Selby’s woods to pieces.”
“What can they do for firewood?” said his wife.
“Let us look out the rules of your father’s coal store and shoe club,” he said.