“How’s Hornton House!” asked Sylvia, rather timidly. It was like inquiring after the near relation of an old friend who might have died.
“Just the same. Miss Primer is still with me. Miss Hossack now has a school of her own. Miss Pinck became very ill with gouty rheumatism and had to retire. I won’t ask you about yourself; you told me so much from the stage. Now that we’ve been able to meet again, won’t you come and visit your old school sometime?”
Sylvia hesitated.
“Please,” Miss Ashley insisted. “I’m not inviting you out of politeness. It would really give me pleasure. I have never ceased to think about you all these years. Well, I won’t keep you, for I’m sure you must be tired. Do come. Tell me, Sylvia. I should so like to bring the girls one afternoon. What would be a good afternoon to come?”
“You mean, when will there be nothing in the program that—”
“We poor schoolmistresses,” said Miss Ashley, with a whimsical look of deprecation.
“Come on Saturday fortnight, and afterward I’ll go back with you all to Hornton House. I’d love that.”
So it was arranged.
On Wednesday of the following week it happened that there was a particularly appreciative audience, and Sylvia became so much enamoured of the laughter that she excelled herself. It was an afternoon of perfect accord, and she traced the source of it to a group somewhere in the middle of the stalls, too far back for her to recognize its composition. After the performance a pack of visiting-cards was brought to the door of her dressing-room. She read: “Mrs. Ian Campbell, Mrs. Ralph Dennison.” Who on earth were they? “Mr. Leonard Worsley”—
Sylvia flung open the door, and there they all were, Mr. and Mrs. Worsley, Gladys and Enid, two good-looking men in the background, two children in the foreground.