But Vonnie would not, and Lily dared not, utter a word of this to the authorities, and consequently the half-hour spent in the drawing-room with Father and Mother before bedtime underwent no curtailment, on such occasions.
They played Happy Families, or Beggar-my-Neighbour, or listened to Father reading aloud, just as usual.
And all the time Lily, in an agony, was inwardly adjuring the Being to whom she believed all her misery to be directly attributable.
"Let them send us to bed soon—don't let her be bad to-night—oh, do make them send us to bed to-night—now at once. Let her go to sleep before it gets bad—I'll be so good if only You'll make them send us to bed at once before it gets bad——"
On one such evening, when Philip Stellenthorpe saw Lily's eyes fixed upon him, and her lips moving, as he thought, in earnest attention to his reading, he paused as he was about to close the book.
"What about an extra quarter of an hour, just for once?" he enquired benevolently. "It's almost too exciting to leave off here, don't you think, little Lily?"
He never really quite believed that poor little Vonnie, who never spoke, could follow the thread of any story, although he would have been much shocked if anybody had ever put such a thought into words.
And Lily, unforgettably, appallingly conscious of her own departure from sacred tradition, gratitude and everything else to be accounted for righteousness, said in a voice that sounded loud and strained: "Please, I'd rather we went to bed now."
There was a dreadful silence.
The kind smile abruptly vanished from Philip's face altogether, and he shut up the book as though he could never bear to open it again, and put it away from him almost with horror.