‘Perhaps she did the same by Aunt Emily,’ returned Hal.
‘And I am sure I have heard Aunt Ada say that she wasn’t a lady; and Aunt Jane that she had all sorts of discreditable connections.’
‘Come now, Gill, if you chatter so, how is mamma to get a word in between?’
‘I’m afraid we have all been hard on her, poor thing!’
‘There now, mamma has done it, just like Aunt Emily!’
‘Anybody would be poor who got killed in a glacier!’
‘No, but one doesn’t say poor when people are—nice.’
‘When I said poor,’ now put in Lady Merrifield, ‘it was not so much that I was thinking of her death as of her having come into a family where nobody welcomed her, and I really do not suppose it was her fault.’
‘Moreover, she seemed to do very well without a welcome,’ added Hal.
‘Who is interrupting now?’ cried Gillian, ‘but was she a lady?’