“I shall certainly write and tell Francie that you are coming, Cousin Bertie.”
“Oho! You think she wouldn’t appreciate a surprise visit, is that it? It doesn’t speak very well for your theory that Frances would never deceive me, does it?” laughed Bertha. “Very well, my dear, write to her by all means, and say that I’ll be there on Saturday. I can’t possibly get away to-morrow.”
“Dear me, no,” said Minnie anxiously. “There’s your dairy class in the morning, and then Nurse Watkins wants to come and talk to you about that poor woman with the twins, and isn’t it the third Friday of the month? because that’s your committee meeting out at Polwerrow, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I shall have my hands full. You’ll have to take the mothers on Saturday afternoon, Minnie. I’ll give you the leaflets to distribute, and they must have tea as usual, and you or Rosamund might read them a little something afterwards. I’ll look out something or other that will do.”
“They’ll be dreadfully disappointed at not seeing you,” sighed Miss Blandflower.
“Tell them how sorry I am to be away. It’s not often I’ve missed one of the meetings, is it? The fact is, it does me good to talk to them all and hear all about baby’s croup and Old Man Granfer’s rheumatism and the rest of it. I revel in a gude old clackit o’ wummin, as we say down here.”
“They all adore you,” said the faithful Minnie.
“Rubbish, my dear! It’s only that one has a knack of understanding them, and then they’ve known me all my life. Why, I’m still ‘Miss Bertie’ to most of them!”
Bertha laughed, finished her breakfast, and told Minnie to come and help her get ready for the dairy class.
Helping Mrs. Tregaskis never meant anything more than the more mechanical jobs that she herself had not time to undertake, but Minnie followed her obediently, and spent the intervening time until Saturday toiling blindly and ineffectively in her wake.