“I shall love to come on Saturday, and shall drive over in the car,” wrote Mrs. Fleming, in the large, generous-looking handwriting that her daughter declared “looked just like mother,” “but I expect you will be surprised to hear that it is the last time I shall be able to use it. Tell Gretta that I have something very important to talk to her about, and I hope she and I will be able to get a little quiet time together.”
“Why, whatever can it be?” asked Margot for the twentieth time.
Gretta’s mind flew, as it almost always did, musicwards. “Could it be about my fiddle?” she asked. “I mean, could Monsieur Villon have complained or anything?”
“Now, Gretta, you know he couldn’t,” laughed her cousin; “Miss Slater’s just as pleased about your music as she can be, and you know that day Miss Read said to nurse, when you cut your finger at supper, that sometime you’d be insuring your right hand for thousands of pounds, like—what’s his name?—Kreisler, isn’t it? Well, that’s the very thing it couldn’t be!”
Gretta gave a sigh of relief. “Oh, I did hope not, of course. It couldn’t be dad, could it?”
“Oh, no, I’m sure it couldn’t be that, either. He wrote to you himself, yesterday, you know—that letter where he said that everything was going on well, and that Ann had learned to cook bacon properly. Depend upon it, Gretta, that’s nothing to be frightened about! But why, oh, why, is it the last time that they’re using the car? I can’t believe that dad wants a new one already! It’s one of those new Daimlers, you know, and he said that its running was perfect—‘mounts a hill like a bird!’—that’s what he said in his very last letter, and it wasn’t so long ago.”
“Well, let’s wait, anyhow; it’s only till to-morrow,” said Gretta, “and won’t it be too simply lovely to see auntie again!”
It was difficult to “keep” the surprise from Sybil for even one day; particularly as she was looking so grave just now, Margot thought, and after consultation with Gretta, she decided on dealing out a tiny piece of excitement to her younger cousin as a kind of tonic.
“Hallo, Sybil!” she said, meeting the damsel alone in the cloak-room that afternoon; “I’ve hardly spoken to you for days.”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” said Sybil, head-in-air, and very distant and grown-up in manner; “you’re not half as nice as I used to think you were, Margot, before you came back from Australia. First you won’t keep your promise and go to the ‘Little House’ with me; and, now, you just put on airs and eat feasts in your old dormitory, although you’re only six months older than me!”