“You bear it beautifully, darling,” she said. “Oh, shall I ever get used to you? I hope so: I mustn’t go on being such a donkey all my days. No; I don’t think I do hope so. Being a donkey is good enough for me. Hee haw! Oh, let go: here’s Burrows coming with the tea. She’ll think it so undignified.”
It was, as a matter of fact, she who had to “let go,” as Burrows entered, followed by Mrs. Mainwaring. Silvia had before now tried to call her “mother,” but the experiment somehow had not succeeded. Mrs. Mainwaring answered to it quite readily, but she received it, so the girl thought, much as she might have received an unsolicited nickname.
“Why, Mrs. Mainwaring!” she said. “I didn’t know you were in.”
Mrs. Mainwaring paused just long enough to let it be inferred that if Silvia had made any inquiries as to that, she would have obtained the information she sought.
“Yes, dear, I have been reading upstairs since lunch time,” she said. “I came to have a cup of tea with you before you started. I hope you will have a pleasant drive.”
Silvia tried to approach.
“Ah, do come too,” she said. “Change your mind, and come with me. Heaps of room.”
“Thank you, dear, I think I will keep to my original plan,” said she. “I like a quiet Sunday sometimes. I shall go to church, and perhaps in the afternoon hear a concert at the Queen’s Hall. The time will pass very pleasantly.”
There was an aura of correct armed neutrality about this, accompanied as it was by that cold sheathed glance, furtive and hostile, that caused some half-comic, half-impatient despair in the girl at her aloofness. Mrs. Mainwaring, so it seemed to her, wanted nobody except herself; she wanted just to be let alone.
“Father went off all right?” asked Peter.