'The children make such an uproar,' said the exasperated Alda. 'I'm sure I thought Geraldine's had been taken long before, and in this parching weather fruit is quite a necessity to me.'
Wilmet was too much aghast at the admission to speak. It was a strange tangle: Clement standing straight and still on the landing-place; Wilmet, with Theodore humming to himself, as innocent of the fray as the tadpoles that Stella was cherishing in the cupboard door-way; Alda, flushed and angry; and on the upper flight, Angela and Bernard dancing and roaming in vehement excitement between anger and alarm. 'Well that Lance was not in this hubbub!' thought deafened and amazed Wilmet.
'What has this to do with the tadpoles?' she asked, in an endeavour to comprehend.
'We said she should be served out,' sung Bernard, 'with a polly—polly—polly-wog bath.'
'But, Bernard, hush!—Angel! don't you see it was no business of yours if Alda did forget?'
She was unprepared for the outbreak this brought on her. 'You, too, Wilmet! Every one backs up those children in their behaviour to me! Lady Herbert Somerville, and Clement, and all! If only Ferdinand saw it!'
'Just step up, Wilmet,' said Clement gently, 'and see whether the children are in league with me.'
He followed Wilmet up to the door of the barrack, an attic that he shared with Lance and Bernard, and showed the long beam that crossed it pasted with a series of little figures cut out in paper, representing a procession in elaborate vestments; and at the end a long-backed individual kneeling before the chair of a confessor, who bore a painful resemblance to the Vicar of St. Matthew's.
'We only wanted to make Tina feel at home,' giggled Angela.
'It would be no matter,' pursued Clement, 'if it were merely quizzing myself. I am used to that; but this is trenching on sacred ground.'