"Straighten the edges ..." (she carefully cut all round the dough on the stone with the handle of the fork); "bang it with your hand and it will come straight" (she banged the dough with the palm of her hand); "then spread a little water over it ... and there!" She sighed and took a fresh mouthful of hair.
"Well, I shall just make a pudding like that," said Poppy determinedly.
The gentle slurring of a silk petticoat was heard on the dry grass, and Mrs. Capron joined them, smiling mischievously.
"The committee meeting is over," she said, "and Clem has gone to see Lady Mostyn off on The Scot and taken Miss Allendner with her. She hopes she will be back for lunch, but is not sure; if not, we are to go on without her. She gave me leave to come and look for you two in the garden, so you can't very well kick me out, even if you don't want me. Hyacinthie, your nurse is walking about with two baked bananas smothered in cream, asking everyone if they've seen you."
"Ooh!" Cinthie slashed the hair out of her mouth in anticipation of her favourite eleven-o'clock lunch. "Mind my babies!" she commanded Poppy with a menacing eye, and sped up the lawn, disappearing into the trees surrounding the house. The two women looked after her with entirely different emotions in their eyes. Mrs. Capron sighed.
"Fleet of foot, but, alas! that one should have to say it of Clem's child—flat of foot also." She seated herself daintily upon the rock which had served for Cinthie's kitchen-table; her eyes fastened themselves upon the emerald ring. She had never seen a ring on Poppy's hand before.
"Her feet are scarcely formed yet," said the latter; "and Clem has perhaps let her wear sandals too long."
Mrs. Capron withdrew her fascinated eyes from the ring and shook her head sadly.
"She will grow up ugly in every way; and it is just as well. If she had Clem's temperament and charm and Bill's beauty she might wreck the world."
"Oh, no—only herself," said Poppy, with a tinge of bitterness. "The world goes gaily on, whatever befalls. But I don't agree with you at all about Cinthie's looks!"