“Well, I should be pleased enough if mine were coming to see me,” said Phoebe, good-temperedly. “I don’t know what else to guess. Has some one given you a present?”
“Wish they had!” ejaculated Rhoda. “No, I’m sorry to say nobody’s had so much good sense. But there’s somebody—I shall have to tell you sooner or later, you stupid goose, so I may as well do it now—somebody’s coming to Number Four. Mrs Eleanor Darcy, a cousin of my Lord Polesworth—only think!—and (that’s best of all) she’s got a nephew.”
“How is that best of all?” asked Phoebe.
“Mr Marcus Welles—isn’t it a pretty name?—and he will come with her, to settle her in her new house. ‘Why?’ Oh, what a silly Phoebe you are! He has three thousand a year.”
“Then I should think he might take better care of his aunt than let her be an indigent gentlewoman,” said Phoebe, rather warmly.
“As if he would want to be pothered with an old aunt!” cried Rhoda. “But I’ll tell you what (you are so silly, you want telling everything!)—I mean to set my cap at him.”
“Won’t you have some cleaner lace on it first?” suggested Phoebe, with the exceedingly quiet, dry fun which was one of her characteristics.
“You stupid, literal thing!” said Rhoda. “I might as well talk to the cat. Oh, here you come, Molly! Now for tea, if ’tis ready, and then—”
Madam was already at the tea-table, and Baxter was just bringing in the kettle.
“I trust you have had a pleasant walk, my dears,” said she, kindly, as the four girls filed in—Molly first, Phoebe last.