‘I’m glad you thought of that, Mysie,’ said Gillian; ‘you see it is mamma’s goodness.’ And Gillian added to herself, “dear little Mysie too. If it had not been for her, I believe I should have ‘grizzled’ all prayer-time, and now I hope I shall attend instead.”
When everybody rose up from their knees, Lady Merrifield was glad to see two fairly cheerful faces. She tried to lessen the responsibility of the confidants, and to get the matter settled by telling Lord Rotherwood at once and publicly that she had thought his kind invitation over, and that she found she must not accept it. Perhaps she warily took the moment after she had seen the postman coming up the drive, for he had only time to say, ‘Now, that’s too bad, Lily, you don’t mean it,’ and she to answer, ‘Yes, in sad earnest, I do,’ before the letters came in, and the attention of the elders was taken off by the distribution.
But Valetta whispered to Gillian, ‘Not going; oh why?’
‘No; never mind, you wouldn’t have gone, anyway—hush—’ said Gillian, beginning, it may be, a little sharply, but then becoming dismayed as Valetta, perhaps a little unhinged by the late pleasures, burst forth into such a fit of crying as made everybody look up, and her mother tell her to go away if she could not behave better. Gillian, understanding a sign of the head as permission, led her away, hearing Lord Rotherwood observe,—
‘There, you cruel party!’ before again becoming absorbed in his letter.
‘Oh dear!’ sighed Fly, turning to Mysie as they rose from table, ‘I am so sorry! It would have been so nice; and I thought we were safe, as mamma had written herself!’
‘Ah! but my mamma hadn’t accepted,’ said Mysie.
Phyllis seemed to take this as final, and sighed, but Mysie presently exclaimed, ‘I say! can’t we all play at Butterfly’s Ball in the hall after lessons?’
‘Lessons?’ said Fly; ‘but it’s holiday-time?’
‘Mamma always makes us do a sort of little lesson, even in the holidays, as she says we get naughty. But I suppose you need not; and perhaps she will not make us now you are here.’