“Bluff, just bluff,” she said. “And even if it wasn’t—— Surely, dear Daisy, it’s better to have no mittens and no Pug than both. Pug—I caught a peep of him through a hole in the brown paper—Pug would have made your Museum a laughing-stock.”
“Was she very dreadful?” asked Georgie.
Lucia gave her little silvery laugh.
“Yes, dear Georgie, quite dreadful. You would have collapsed if she had said to you ‘Mr. Pillson, I believe.’ Wouldn’t you, Georgie? Don’t pretend to be braver than you are.”
“Well, I think we ought all to be much obliged to you, Mrs. Lucas,” said Mrs. Boucher. “And I’m sure we are. I should never have stood up to her like that! And if she takes the mittens away, I should be much inclined to put another pair in the case, for the case belongs to us and not to her, with just the label ‘These Mittens did not belong to Queen Charlotte, and were not presented by Lady Ambermere.’ That would serve her out.”
Lucia laughed gaily again.
“So glad to have been of use,” she said. “And now, dear Daisy, will you be as kind to me as Georgie was yesterday and give me a little game of golf this afternoon? Not much fun for you, but so good for me.”
Daisy had observed some of Lucia’s powerful strokes yesterday, and she was rather dreading this invitation for fear it should not be, as Lucia said, much fun for her. Luckily, she and Georgie had already arranged to play to-day, and she had, in anticipation of the dread event, engaged Piggy, Goosie, Mrs. Antrobus, and Colonel Boucher to play with her on all the remaining days of that week. She meant to practise like anything in the interval. And then, like a raven croaking disaster, the infamous Georgie let her down.
“I’d sooner not play this afternoon,” he said. “I’d sooner just stroll out with you.”
“Sure, Georgie?” said Lucia. “That will be nice then. Oh, how nervous I shall be.”