“Oh, I remember,” said I. “She couldn’t do it until I got two of the directors of the road to insist on it. But I guess that was merely a bluff of hers to squeeze us for a few hundreds extra.”
“Not at all,” Edna assured me. “You are so ignorant, Godfrey. Please do be careful not to say those coarse things before people.”
“As you please,” said I, cheerfully, for I was used to this kind of calling down. “All the same, the Ryper lady is hot for the dough.”
Edna shivered. She detested slang—continued to detest and avoid it even after she learned that it was fashionable. “Miss Ryper guards her list of pupils as their mothers guard their visiting lists,” said she. “But now she likes Margot. The dear child has been elected to the most exclusive fraternity. Every girl in it has to wear hand-made underclothes and has to have had at least a father, a grandfather, and a great grandfather.” Edna laughed with pride at her own cleverness before she went on. “Margot came to me when she was proposed, and cried as if her little heart would break. She said she didn’t know anything about her grandfather and great grandfather. But I hadn’t forgotten to arrange that. I think of everything.”
“Oh, that was easy enough,” said I. “Your grandfather was a tailor and mine was in the grocery business like father.”
Edna looked round in terror. “Sh!” she exclaimed. “Servants always listen.” She went to the door—we were in the small upstairs sitting room—opened it suddenly, looked into the hall, closed the door, and returned to a chair nearer the lounge on which I was stretched comfortably smoking.
“What’s the matter?” said I.
“No one was there,” said she. “Haven’t I told you never to speak of—of those horrible things?”
“But Margot——”
“Margot doesn’t know. She must never know! Poor child, she is so sensitive, it would make her ill.”