"Yes," assented her mother, "that was quite right. But little girls must not be too ready with their tongues."
"Rose isn't," said Bob, with a mischievous glance at his sister. "She scarcely spoke a word to Mr. Moseley this afternoon."
"I-I don't know Mr. Moseley very well," stammered poor Rose, "and I was shy, I suppose. So were you, Bob, for that matter."
"Bob is three years your junior, Rose," said her mother. "At your age, you ought not to be shy. Why could you not talk to the Vicar as well as Mavis?"
Rose hung her head and made no response, whilst her cousin felt very uncomfortable. Mavis was fully conscious, by this time, that her aunt did not approve of her, that she regarded her with critical eyes, and that she was always displeased if any one noticed her more than her cousins. And these facts prevented her from being as happy as she otherwise would have been at the Mill House. She was never quite at her ease in her aunt's presence, and certainly never at her best. And yet, Mrs. John had no intention of being otherwise than just and kind to her little niece, and was vexed when she observed that Mavis' affection for her uncle was deepening day by day, whilst she held more and more aloof from herself.
"Aunt Lizzie doesn't like me," Mavis thought frequently, and she would wonder if she could have possibly done anything to evoke her aunt's displeasure. "I try to please her, but I see she doesn't care for me, and I'm afraid I don't care for her—much."
[CHAPTER VI]
ROSE IN TROUBLE
AUTUMN had given place to winter, a wet, depressing winter with rain and westerly gales, and the flat country between W— and Oxford was flooded. There had been almost incessant rain for weeks now. And Mavis, as she sat at the little table by her bedroom window engaged in writing a letter to her mother, which she was taking great pains to spell correctly, considering every word, glanced at the leaden sky every now and again, in the hope of seeing a break in the clouds.
"I don't think we ever had such bad weather in London," she reflected. "But perhaps I didn't notice it so much there. What will happen, I wonder, if the floods go on increasing? We seem almost surrounded by water as it is."