“I’ll get it up,” said Geraldine.
“Go and give her a hand,” Mrs. Palmer calmly directed young Morrison. “My gurl is out. They’re all the same, nowadays—always out, never in.”
“I never have any trouble with servants,” Elsie murmured.
She was annoyed that her mother should thus dismiss Morrison, and that he should meekly prepare to obey her.
He opened the door for Geraldine and went out behind her, and Elsie heard her sister talking animatedly as they went downstairs.
“What’s come over Geraldine?” she coldly enquired.
“Why should anything have come over her, as you call it? Geraldine’s a gurl like you are, I’d have you remember, and a very much better one than you’ve ever been, to her widowed mother. You mind your own business, Elsie.”
“That’s a nice way to speak to me, when I haven’t been at home for I don’t know how long.”
“And whose fault has that been?” enquired Mrs. Palmer. “Not but what I’m always pleased to see you, Elsie, as I’ve told you time and time again, and Mr. Williams too—Horace, I should say—if he cares to come. But don’t you go interfering with Geraldine’s friends.”
“Is this fellow a friend of hers?”