Rosamund did know. She had heard Mrs. Tregaskis say so already.
She went drearily up to the schoolroom supper, where Miss Blandflower was waiting for them.
“I hope you’ve brought good appetites with you from Wales,” she said, taking her place at the head of the table. “I see I must ‘wrastle’ with this large ham-bone.”
She did so, in the ineffectual manner that was characteristic of her.
“Shall I cut the bread, Miss Blandflower?” asked Hazel.
“Please, dear, if you will do,” replied her teacher of English.
The meal was a silent one.
Little Frances was fighting bravely with tears and fatigue, and Rosamund’s thoughts were in the Wye Valley, where lights were beginning to tremble in the cottage windows, and only the little house on the slope of the hill would remain dark and silent. Hazel looked at them from time to time with a sort of compassion in her great laughing eyes, but was more engaged in a kind of silent drama conducted between her knife and her silver mug, with which she nightly diversified the monotony of meals eaten in Miss Blandflower’s company.
When presently she upset the mug half-full of milk, Minnie rose, rebuked her pupil querulously, murmured something which sounded like “Well, Allah gear cum allah gear, as they say,” applied her table-napkin to the widening pool, and the meal came to an end.
Interminable though the day had seemed, it was finished at last, and Rosamund and Frances were lying in the pretty bedroom which they were to share.