“No.”
That was Mary Ambrey, who is always reasonable, and seldom emphatic.
“Really, Mrs. Kendal, she isn’t. Not by about eighteen years. Captain Patch looks very young, I quite agree, but as a matter of fact, he’s quite old enough to take care of himself.”
“More shame for him,” declared Mumma, not at all viciously, but with that effortless, relentless implacability of hers that always makes one think of a tank in action.
“I don’t expect they realize that the way they go about together isn’t very good form,” said Blanchie Kendal brightly and kindly. She is the one whom Mumma often speaks of as “our family peacemaker,” but I doubt if Mrs. Kendal thought it quite fitting that she should peacemake on the subject of Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch.
“That will do, dear,” she said, and Blanchie desisted from her charitable attempts at once.
The Kendals are all of them rather large young women, but when Mumma says, “That will do,” like that, they seem to shrink into a temporary invisibility.
“I think,” said Mrs. Kendal further, “that we shall have to make a move. Will you see if you can find Puppa and the others, Blanchie? I am afraid we ought to make a move.”
“So ought we,” said Claire, and in spite of hospitable protests from Leeds and Mrs. Leeds, people began to prepare for departure.
Claire, perhaps with a recollection of her tête-à-tête journey with Leeds in his runabout, at once offered to take Mary and her children back to the Manor House if they would spend the evening with us, and Mary agreed.