Bertha appeared to consider.
“How would it be if we took up tea to them, later?” she said, with an air of suggestion. “That’s what we’ll do, and you can help me to carry the tea-basket. I dare say Francie will be able to come with us by that time, poor child. It will be cooler for her.
“Good-bye, you dear people. We shall meet again later—under the wych-elm, Minnie, you know. Four o’clock.”
Morris dashed out and opened the gate for them.
“You’ll walk back with me,” he said hurriedly to Rosamund, and read her answer in her eyes, before turning back with discontent in his own, to where Bertha Tregaskis awaited him.
She surveyed him with unabashed gaze.
“Well, you think I’m an interfering, tiresome old spoilsport, don’t you, Morris? But I really must have a talk with you, and I don’t feel you’re going to be very angry with me, somehow. After all, we’re very old friends.”
She laughed at him with a sort of friendly pleading in her look, and Morris laughed a little too. He had always liked his mother’s friend.
“Let’s sit down in the shade, and leave the weeding till it’s cooler. And now, my dear boy, I’m going straight to the point. I always face up to my fences boldly—at least I used to, in the good old days when Frederick could afford to keep a couple of gees in the stables. You mustn’t make love to my little girl.”
Morris, to his fury, felt himself colouring hotly. He could not think what to say.