‘You’re not a bad sort,’ said Rupert, thumping her on the back as he went out, but keeping his face carefully turned away; ‘I think I will.’
Charlotte and Charles met in the doorway, and the meeting was rather violent, for both were in a hurry—Charlotte to find out what William had said and Charles to tell her. I am sorry to say that he had not been washing his hands, as indeed their colour plainly confessed, but helping William in the toilet of the horse; for Caroline had succeeded in persuading William that to-day was, for all practical purposes, the same as the other day, all the more readily perhaps because Mrs. Wilmington had come out and said that she didn’t think it was, at all. And Caro had said she thought perhaps they’d better all wash, and not just Charles. And William said that he would drive them to Lord Andore’s lodge gates, because he had to go down to the station to meet the Master anyhow, and it was on the way, or next door to, but they’d have to walk back. ‘And we’ve forgotten to decide what flowers to get, and Caro says bring up the books so that she can look at them while you’re washing your hands. Because William says he must start in a quarter of an hour.’
Thus Charles ended breathlessly, adding, ‘Where’s Rupert?’
‘He’s not coming with us. Get down Pope IV, and I’ll get the Language Of’; and carrying the books she went up the wide shallow stairs, three at once.
There was but little time to make a careful selection of the flowers most likely to influence a youthful peer. Charlotte was all for repeating, flower for flower, the bouquet designed for suitors, which had been so successfully used in the case of Rupert and the Uncle. But Caroline argued that what suited uncles might very well be the worst possible thing for lords who were no relations, and that it would be much better to start afresh with an entirely new floral selection.
‘Look in the Language Of, then, while I wash,’ she said. ‘Look for duty and justice and being kind to the poor.’ Charlotte fluttered the pages obediently.
‘Jealousy, Jest, Joy, Justice. Gladiolus and sweet-scented tussilage. What’s tussilage?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Caroline, soaping fervently; ‘try the medicine book.’ The medicine book admitted that tussilage was another name for Tussilago Farfara, or coltsfoot.
‘But coltsfoot comes in February,’ said Caroline, ‘and we don’t know it when it’s grown up.’