“Anyone would think we were tea-shop girls,” said Miss Ryott pettishly.
The order meant an excursion to the basement, where Mrs. Entwhistle had to be found, the keys asked for, and bread-and-butter cut very thin and arranged on a china plate, and two or three sponge biscuits taken out of a special tin, and the whole arranged on a small green-and-white tea-service consecrated to Madame Elena’s use. But then Madame Elena had her tea sent up at a reasonable hour, when the girls had theirs, and Mrs. Entwhistle prepared it, which she would never do unaided at any hour earlier than four o’clock. If Old Madam chose to have tea before half-past three one of the girls must get it ready.
Gina, especially on a hot afternoon in the slack season, very much preferred the shop.
“Shall I help you, dear?” affectionately inquired Marguerite. “Lydia could give us a call if anyone came in. Not that anyone will—they are all in Scotland or at the sea somewhere—lucky things!”
“Thanks, dear—how sweet of you!”
They went away arm-in-arm, leaving Lydia drowsily writing out “Marked down” tickets, copied from a list of Madame Elena’s making.
“That friendship won’t last,” remarked Miss Graham sapiently, from her desk.
She was right, as usual.
Lydia had not been very long at Elena’s when the Great Quarrel took place, and assumed an intensity that could only have obtained during the month of September.
It all reminded Lydia very much of the girls at Miss Glover’s school.