“Ah!” said Caroline, and her plump elbow pressed Sophia’s. “Which rooms, I wonder?”
“I did not inquire, Miss Caroline.”
“Then kindly inquire this afternoon, and tell him the butter is deteriorating, but inquire first or you’ll get nothing out of him.” She turned with malicious triumph to Sophia. “So that dream’s over!”
“We shall have to break it to her gently,” Sophia said; “but it may not be true.”
In the dining-room over which the General’s portrait tried, and failed, to preside, as he himself had done in life, and where he was conquered by an earlier and a later generation, by the shining eloquence of the old furniture and silver and the living flesh and blood of his children, Caroline gave Rose the news without, Sophia thought, a spark of delicacy.
“They say Francis Sales is bringing home a wife.”
“Really?” Rose said, taking toast.
“He has sent orders for part of the house to be done up.”
Rose raised her eyes. “Ah, she’s hurt,” Sophia thought, but Rose merely said, “If he touches the drawing-room or the study I shall never forgive him”; and then, thoughtfully, she added, “but he won’t touch the drawing-room.”
“H’m, he’ll do what his wife tells him, I imagine. No girl will appreciate Mrs. Sales’s washy paintings.”