“Ma-me-laid, as the chicken said,” lugubriously and quite absent-mindedly remarked Miss Blandflower, neither she nor anyone else paying the slightest heed to the historic jest, which she repeated almost every morning of her life.
“Well,” Bertha said at last, “I suppose I must sacrifice the poor Mothers’ Union and trot after my stray lamb. I’ve a very good mind to pay her a surprise visit, and see what she’s really up to.”
“Frances would never deceive you, Cousin Bertie,” indignantly said Rosamund.
“I dare say, my dear; but Frances is with people whom I know very little about, and I can’t tell what nonsense they may be stuffing into her little head. Anyway, I’m going to find out.”
“Better send Rosamund,” was the observation of her Cousin Frederick, uttered in tones which conveyed at one and the same time the impressions that he was making the suggestion sarcastically, and that he knew it would be displeasing to his wife.
Rosamund looked at Mrs. Tregaskis. She had not the slightest expectation of accompanying her to the convent, and was not even sure that she wanted to do so.
“Rubbish,” said Mrs. Tregaskis briskly. “No use glowering at me, Rosamund. You’d be dreadfully in my way, darling, and in Frances’, too, little though you may believe it. She’s never quite natural and open when you’re there to try and tell her what she must say and what she mustn’t.”
This observation, partly from the substratum of truth which it contained, always roused in Rosamund a fury of pain and resentment.
She told herself vehemently that Cousin Bertie never understood anything, and hated the quick, angry flush that denoted her feelings plainly to that amused, observant eye.
Her retaliation she knew, with all the impotent anger of youth at its own inadequacy, to be as awkward and ineffectual as it was fierce.