'I will, I will—I mean, I will try,' said Angela. 'O Felix! I do like you now I find you don't want me to be respectable. No, don't say something grave and prosy, for I do like you now; and never mind about not being one's father, for I don't believe anybody could be better to me.' And she put her face down to his and kissed him as she used when she was a baby girl; then ran away on thinking she heard some one coming.
'So,' thought Felix, as he raised himself on his sound elbow, 'the upshot of it is that I don't want her to be respectable! I hope to goodness she won't take to being like Tina—though I don't know why I should either! Poor child! I'll write to Audley about her when I can. And here comes the dear little Cherry for her hard day's work.'
With his dictation and superintendence, Geraldine was quite equal to the Pursuivant's Friday requirements; and altogether this day of rest and leisure was welcome. The sisters were much less anxious about the sore throat than if it had been in the shop! and indeed it was nearly well, and no obstacle to his being talked to and amused, to the general enjoyment, in the rare pleasure of having him at their mercy. In the afternoon came a message—'The Miss Pearsons' love, and if she could leave Mr. Underwood, would Miss Underwood step up?' Such messages were not infrequent, and this was supposed to spring from a desire to know the particulars of the accident; so that on her return Wilmet was greeted with the inquiry whether she was considered responsible for the tea-kettle's misbehaviour, since she had been kept in so long.
'No,' said Wilmet, gravely. 'Run away, little ones!'
Stella alone accepted the epithet; but Wilmet was too much absorbed in her tidings to look about in the fire-lit twilight for further victims.
'The Miss Pearsons are very much troubled by their letters from St Heliers,' she said. 'Alice Knevett is actually married.'
'To Edgar?' Angela sprang up with a bound. 'Oh, what fun!'
'No, indeed,' Wilmet replied in her most repressive tone. 'It is to a Frenchman of the name of Tanneguy, in the wine trade.'
'The abominable girl!' cried Angela at the top of her indignant voice. 'A Frenchman! I'll never believe in any one again.'
'Yes, Angela,' said Wilmet; 'it is a lesson, indeed, of what tricks and subterfuges—'