“I think Hazel is going to be nice,” whispered Frances wistfully.
“Yes, so do I. But I wish we had stayed with Lady Argent and the son who was lame.”
“Oh! so do I!”
“Nearly asleep, my darlings?” inquired Cousin Bertha at the door. “I’ve just run up to say good-night. I always tuck Hazel up, and now I must do the same to my two new little daughters.”
“Rosamund,” said Frances in a guilty whisper, when Mrs. Tregaskis had rustled softly away again, “perhaps we oughtn’t to have wished that, about having stayed with Lady Argent. Cousin Bertie is very, very kind, isn’t she?”
If an unconscious appeal for reassurance underlay the question, neither Frances nor Rosamund was aware of it.
“Yes,” answered Rosamund, with shamed conviction; “she is very, very kind.”
Kind Mrs. Tregaskis was already hastening downstairs again. In the lamp-lit library her husband was reading the newspaper. He did not stir as she came in to the room, nor raise his eyes.
“Well!” sighed Bertha, as she moved to her writing-table, stacked with papers in orderly pigeon-holes and bearing a goodly pile of unopened letters. “How dreadfully work accumulates, even during a week. Here are all those leaflets for the Mothers’ Union that ought to have gone out last week. Minnie really is a fool. And she forwarded all the wrong letters to me, too, and none of the right ones. I must answer half these to-night.”
She sat down, and drew paper and ink towards her.