‘Quite so. I might have known. I wish I could do something to amuse you. If you had any friends in the neighbourhood you might have the carriage and drive out to see them. But of course you have no acquaintances here.’
‘The clergyman is a friend of ours,’ Charles remarked.
And Caroline said if only they might go and see him.
‘By all means,’ said the Uncle; ‘bring him back to tea with you. I am sincerely glad to find that you are making yourselves at home.’
With that he went away.
‘Do you think that was snarkasm? About making ourselves at home?’ Charles asked.
‘Not it,’ Charlotte assured him. ‘I’m sure the Uncle’s open as the day.’
‘All the same we’d better clear up,’ said Charlotte, and on the word Harriet came in to lay the cloth. Mrs. Wilmington followed. And it was she who cleared up, with pinched lips and a marked abstaining from reproaches.
The children dined alone, and the cook remarked on the sudden growth of their appetites. How was she to know that generous double helpings of beef, Yorkshire pudding, potatoes, summer cabbage, rhubarb pie and custard were hidden behind the books on the dining-room shelf, for the later refreshment of a runaway boy at present lurking in the straw-loft?