‘Yes, mamma,’ said Mysie humbly, looking at Dolores all the time. She was too generous to say that part of the delay had been caused by looking for her cousin, and having to adapt her pace to the slower one, but she decidedly expected the avowal from Dolores, and thought it mean not to make it. ‘And, oh, the jam!’ she mourned as she went upstairs. While, on the other hand, Dolores considered what she called ‘being sent to bed’ an unmerited and unjust sentence given without a hearing; when their tardiness had been all Mysie’s fault, not hers. She had no notion that her aunt only sent them to lie down, because they looked heated, tired, and spent, and was really letting them off their morning’s lessons. It was a pity that she felt too forlorn and sullen even to complain when Gillian brought up Macaulay’s ‘Armada’ for her to learn the first twelve lines, or she might have come to an understanding, but all that was elicited from her was a glum ‘No,’ when asked if she knew it already. Gillian told her not to keep her dusty boots on the bed, and she vouchsafed no answer, for she did not consider Gillian her mistress, though, after she was left to herself, she found them so tight and hot that she took them off. Then she looked over the verses rather contemptuously—she who always learnt German poetry; and she had a great mind to assert her independence by getting off the bed, and writing a letter to Maude Sefton, describing the narrow stupidity of the whole family, and how her aunt, without hearing her, had send her to be for Mysie’s fault. However she felt so shaky and tired that she thought she had better rest a little first, and somehow she fell fast asleep, and was only awakened by the gong. She jumped up in haste, recollecting that the delightful sympathizing Miss Constance was coming to luncheon, and set her hair and dress to rights eagerly, observing, however, to herself, that her horrid aunt was quite capable of imprisoning her all the time for not having learnt that stupid poetry.
She hesitated a little where to go when she reached the hall, but the schoolroom door was open, and she heard a mournful voice concluding with a gasp—
‘Our glorious semper eadem, the banner of our pride.’
And Miss Vincent saying, ‘Now, my dear, go and wash your face, and try not to be such a dismal spectacle.’
And then Mysie came out, with heavy eyes and a mottled face, showing that she had been crying all the time she had been learning, over her own fault certainly, but likewise over mamma’s displeasure and Dolly’s shabbiness.
‘Well, Dora,’ said Miss Vincent, ‘have you come to repeat your poetry?’
‘No,’ said Dolores. ‘I went to sleep instead.’
‘Oh! I’m glad of that. I wish poor Mysie had done the same. I believe it was what Lady Merrifield intended, you both looked so knocked up.’
Dolores cleared up a little at this, especially as Miss Vincent was no relation, and she thought it a good time to make her protest against mere English.
‘Oh!’ she said. ‘I supposed that was the reason she gave me such a stupid, childish, sing-song nursery rhyme to learn. I can say lots of Schiller and some Goethe.’