'Why, Bobbie, what nonsense is this?' said Clement. 'One would think you took them for Ferdinand and Alda.'
'It is all the same!—Stella, you run out to the garden—by that door, you child!' And then it all came out to the two fresh auditors, who listened with conviction. 'And now,' concluded Robina, 'there is not a place where he can so much as speak to her! What shall we do to get them away?'
'You do not know yet that she wishes it,' said Sister Constance, who had been a wife before she was a Sister, and saw that it was matronly tact and tenderness that the crisis needed; 'but I'll tell you what you can safely and naturally do. Go in and fetch Cherry's folding chair, and call the children to carry her appurtenances down to the garden. That will make a break, and Wilmet can take advantage of it if she sees fit.'
'Alda is worse than ten children,' said Clement; 'she has an inordinate appetite for captains in the absence of her own.'
'It can't be helped. Better do too little than too much.'
And finding Robina shy and giggling, and Clement shy and irresolute, Sister Constance herself made the diversion by opening the door, when Wilmet's nervous look and manner was confirmation strong. 'Lady Herbert Somerville—Captain Harewood,' was Alda's formal introduction in her bad taste; while the Sister, after shaking hands, bade Bernard take Geraldine's chair to the lawn.
'Oh, are we to go out?' said Alda. 'A good move. Of all things I detest in summer, a town house is the worst. I'll just fetch a hat, I want to show my pet view.—Our brothers are always fighting about their churches, Captain Harewood.'
The thing was done; Mr. Froggatt was already gone, and as Alda's trappings were never quickly adjusted, it needed very little contrivance to leave a not unwilling pair on one side of the doors, and cut off the rest. Robina, too much excited to stand still, flew about the stairs till Alda appeared in a tiny hat fluttering with velvet tails.
'Are they gone out?'
'Yes;' for quite enough to constitute a 'they' were gone; and when Alda reached them, they sedulously set themselves to detain her, and thereby betrayed the reason.