‘Wait awhile,’ cries she, still shaking with laughter. ‘Susan, seize his arm. Tell us the rest of it. Was she——’
‘I won’t tell you anything; and I’m sorry I told you a word at all. Let me go, Betty. D’ye hear? You are tearing my breeches.’
‘And you are tearing our hearts,’ says Betty, ‘Jacky darling. Go on; don’t be a cross cat, now. Was she——’
‘Twice as pretty as you, any way,’ says Jacky, with virulence.
‘Is that all? Poor girl! says Betty, who is very hard to beat. ‘Prettier than Susan?’
‘Yes, lots.’
‘She must be a real princess, then, and no ghost. I’d like to leave a card upon her. Perhaps you would kindly push it through the hole in the wall, Jacky.’
This is adding to the insult, and Jacky, with the loss of a button or two, and serious injury to his suspenders, breaks away.
‘There now!’ says he, beginning to cry. ‘Look what you’ve done; and no one to mend it; and Aunt Maria will be angry, and father will give me twenty lines——’ Sobs check his utterance.
Susan rises hurriedly, and, with a whispered word to Bonnie, she passes him on to Betty, who, in spite of her carelessness, receives the little fragile creature with loving arms, hugging him to her, and beginning to ransack her memory for a story to tell him, such as his soul loveth; then Susan, slipping her arm round Jacky’s shoulder, whispers soft comforts to him. He shall come in now and do his lessons with her, so that father shall not be vexed this evening, and after dinner (the Rector’s family dined at two, and had high tea at seven) she would take him with her up to Crosby Park.