CHAPTER VII
TRIALS OF PHILANTHROPY
‘Well, Miss Emmeline, dear, you know best what Miss Bolton would like, so I won’t try to over-persuade you, though I’m real sorry you can’t stay just till the 5.25.’ Poor Mary could not understand what had come over her guests. All through that delicious tea of shrimps and strawberry jam, which she had especially provided for the occasion, they had seemed curiously restless and excited, and now here was Emmeline actually insisting on returning by the earlier of the two trains she had mentioned.
‘I’m afraid Aunt Grace—I mean, I think it would make us rather too late getting home,’ said Emmeline, rather confusedly, as she kicked Micky and Kitty under the table by way of a hint to them to hold their tongues. Perhaps on an ordinary occasion the twins might not have taken the hint so submissively, but at that moment they were too eager to see what was going to happen next to mind either being kicked or being hurried away from Mary’s house.
‘Then, if you really think so, I’m afraid it’s about time you were starting,’ said Mary regretfully; ‘George will be sadly disappointed not to see you again, but that can’t be helped.’
‘You must give him our best respects,’ said Kitty—(George always sent his best respects to them, so Kitty supposed it was the correct form of message)—‘and here’s some toffee for him—at least, it’s called candy, though it really is toffee. It has got a little crumby and pockety, but perhaps he’ll excuse that, and it may comfort him. Toffee’s a wonderful comfort sometimes.’
‘Oh, Miss Kitty, George wouldn’t think of taking your toffee, bless your heart!’ said Mary, kissing the child, as she helped her on with her hat; ‘but I’ll tell him you wanted to give it him, and that will comfort him.’
‘I should have thought myself it would only have disappointed him more,’ said Kitty; ‘but you know best, of course.’
‘Well, we must really be starting,’ said Emmeline, in a nervous fever. She was terribly afraid that Diamond Jubilee might have grown tired of waiting outside, and have run away.
Mary hobbled with them as far as the door. ‘It has been just lovely having you,’ she remarked, as she opened it to let them out. ‘I only wish, though, I could have come to the station to see you off’—a wish which, under the circumstances, they could hardly echo.