Makes little folks healthy, wealthy, and wise,’”
added Miss Blandflower encouragingly. She was generally late for breakfast herself, but more from innate unpunctuality than because she failed to rise between seven and eight o’clock every morning.
“Well, Rosamund, dear, can’t you tell us a little something about the ceremony? Was it pretty?”
“Yes, I think it was, Cousin Bertie.”
Rosamund racked her brains. If only she did not feel utter inability to speak!
Once or twice before in her life this same sensation, which she could only translate into physical terms by telling herself that her tongue felt as though it were weighted, had assailed her.
She thought of it as a sort of partial paralysis, and something of the blankness of her sensations was reflected in her speechless fixity of gaze. Her guardian looked at her.
“Now, look here, old lady,” she suddenly said with all her characteristic authoritative kindness in her voice, “I don’t want to drag this out of you bit by bit, if you feel it’s rather more than you can stand just yet. But remember that Frances is my child as well as your sister, and we all love her and want to hear about her. I don’t approve of what’s she’s done, and I don’t choose to go and countenance a performance of which I dislike the idea as much as I do that wedding-dress business. But I was glad and willing that you should go, as you know, and I want news of her—so do we all. Now, Rosamund, if you’re too sore to talk about any of it, just say so, and we’ll try to make allowances and wait until you can overcome yourself a little for the sake of other people. But once for all—I’m not going to pump you.”
Mrs. Tregaskis set her lips in a very determined way indeed, and knitted vigorously, and Miss Blandflower, seizing upon her last words, repeated vaguely: “It is the pump, the village pump.”
Rosamund sought for words desperately.