This discussion brought the two girls across the paddock out into a road with a broad, neat footpath, where numerous little children were being exercised with nurses and perambulators. At first it was bordered by fields on either side, but villas soon began to spring up, and presently the girls reached what looked like a long, low ‘cottage residence,’ but was really two, with a verandah along the front, and a garden divided in the middle by a paling covered with canary nasturtium shrubs. The verandah on one side was hung with a rich purple pall of the dark clematis, on the other by a Gloire de Dijon rose. There were bright flower beds, and the dormer windows over the verandah looked like smiling eyes under their deep brows of creeper-trimmed verge-board. What London-bred Dolores saw was a sight that shocked her—a lady standing unbonnetted just beyond the verandah, talking to a girl whose black hat and jacket looked what Mysie called ‘very G.F.S.-y.’
The lady did not turn out to be young or beautiful. She was near middle age, and looked as if she were far too busy to be ever plump; she had a very considerable amount of nose and rather thin, dark hair, done in a fashion which, like that of her navy blue linen dress, looked perfectly antiquated to Dolores. As she saw the two girls at the gate she came down the path eagerly to welcome them.
‘Ah! my dear Mysie! so kind of your dear mother! I thought I should hear from her.’ And as she kissed Mysie, she added, ‘And this is the new cousin. My dear, I am glad to see you here.’
Dolores thought her own dignified manner had kept off a kiss, not knowing that Miss Hacket was far too ladylike to be over-familiar, and that there was no need to put on such a forbidding look.
Mysie gave her message and note, but Miss Hacket could not give the verbal answer at once till she had consulted her sister. She was not sure whether Constance had not made an engagement to play lawn-tennis, so they must come in.
There sounded ‘coo-roo-oo coo-roo-oo’ in the verandah, and Mysie cried—
‘Oh, the dear doves!’
Miss Hacket said she had been just feeding them when the G.F.S. girl arrived, and as Mysie came to a halt in delight at the aspect of a young one that had just crept out into public life, the sister was called to the window. She was a great deal younger and more of the present day in style than her sister, and had pensive-looking grey eyes, with a somewhat bored languid manner as she shook hands with the early visitors.
The sisters had a little consultation over the note, during which Dolores studied them, and Mysie studied the doves, longing to see the curious process of feeding the young ones.
When Miss Hacket turned back to her with the acceptance of the invitation, she thought she might wait just to help Miss Hacket to put in the corn and the sop. Meantime Miss Constance talked to Dolores.