"Fuller will let you arrange anything that you like, and think best, only you've got enough to do already. I don't know how you get through it all."
Miss Marchrose uttered neither the meaningless protestations nor the pseudo-heroic acceptances habitually reserved for such intimations of indispensability. She said, "I enjoy it thoroughly, you know. Miss Easter brought your children to the College to-day, which created a diversion."
Mark uttered a rather incoherent sound, not inexpressive of dismay.
"Dare I ask how my children comported themselves?"
"They were quite good."
"Poor things!" said Mark, with a half-laugh. "They are not often quite good. The Rector's daughter is only with them for an hour or two in the mornings, and she complains that Ruthie is very noisy and intractable, and then Sarah has them more or less for the rest of the day; but she has no proper control over them, and the boy is always in disgrace. I don't quite know what he does."
The vastness of the field of conjecture thus opened up apparently held Miss Marchrose silent.
"Iris is very kind to them, but she spoils Ruthie, on the whole. And really, you know," said Mark apologetically, "I think Ruthie is the more in need of being sat upon of the pair."
Miss Marchrose laughed, but she made no endearing pretence of a tender-heartedness roused to rebellion at the idea of the requisite discipline.
Sir Julian reflected that, however thoroughly she might be aware of the peculiar circumstances governing Mark's domestic arrangements, she had at all events no intention of making capital out of them by a display of sentimental interest in Mark's singularly unattractive progeny.