“Humph!” said her aunt, looking at her shrewdly while she shook out and refolded her garments. “Who are these Madisons?”
“Very nice people,” replied Katherine, with exaggerated indifference.
“So you seem to find them, and they apparently take an active part in your household affairs. I was amused at Miss Madison! Running upstairs without ever saying ‘by your leave’! But if they are related to the Roger Madisons, they are all that one would wish.”
“The brother’s name is Roger,” said Victoria.
“Oh,” remarked Mrs. Wentworth Ward, “then I have nothing to say.”
“After saving Peter’s life I think they are at liberty to do anything they like,” said Katherine, with the asperity which intercourse with her aunt never failed to bring to the surface. “And if they were not the Roger Madisons, what would you have to say, Aunt Sophia?”
Victoria, dreading an argument, abruptly turned the conversation by introducing the matter of the typewriter. It was, perhaps, a case of leaping from the frying-pan into the fire, but she felt that anything would be preferable to a lengthy discussion of the Madisons between her aunt and Katherine, who never, under any circumstances, were known to agree, and who each possessed to the last degree the power of irritating the other.
Sophy, meanwhile, had been shut out completely both from Peter’s room and from that of her aunt. She had been told by her sisters to go to bed, but as they had failed to enforce the command, she had not yet obeyed it. Instead, she wandered disconsolately over the house, even seeking Blanch in the kitchen, although she was not a favorite with the child. Sophy was discriminating, and her prejudices were strong.
She found Blanch engaged in a spirited discussion with the lately arrived maid from Beacon Street, and her presence was so completely ignored by them both, that she left the kitchen and returned to the main part of the house.
Glancing from the window at the side of the front door, she saw Mr. Madison approaching, and she opened the door and gladly welcomed him.