[p126]
CHAPTER XI
MISS BIBBY’S HOLIDAY
Miss Bibby worked another half-hour, perhaps. She was nervous and excited; she had set herself to catch the four o’clock post, and there still were numbers of pages with which she was dissatisfied. She was essaying, indeed, an impossible task—trying to couch Hugh Kinross’s eccentricities in dignified English prose. And the shoes, at least, absolutely refused to be so treated; they seemed to stand out from the article just as prominently as they had stood out among the furniture of his room.
Miss Bibby sighed despairingly—the strain and the loss of sleep were telling upon her.
“Miss Bibby,” shouted Pauline, bursting into the room, “Miss Bibby, Miss Bibby!”
“Run away,” said Miss Bibby; “run away at once, Pauline. Surely it is not much for me to ask to have one day—just one day to myself.”
“Quick, quick!” cried Pauline, “Muffie’s stood on an ant-bed, and she’s swarming!”
[p127]
The shoes and the far shade of the laurel trees dropped instantly from Miss Bibby’s horizon and, the horrors of the situation overwhelming her, she flew after Pauline to the victim.
The child’s condition was piteous; absolutely mad with terror and pain, she was rushing about on the path, Max, yelling with sympathy, tearing after her. Lynn, at the first frantic moment when she saw her sister’s high white socks turned black with their live covering, had leapt towards her and, with hands and pinafore, had essayed to sweep the things off. But the assailants were as alarmed and angry at their position now as the attacked and, while some sought safety by running up Lynn’s sleeves, thus forcing her also to dance and scream, the remainder swarmed higher and higher up the luckless Muffie.
Miss Bibby’s presence of mind quite deserted her. The whole of her note-book seemed to zig-zag vainly across her brain—her note-book where she had carefully written down antidotes for any poisons the children might swallow, remedies for scalds, burns, cut fingers, sprains, snake-bites. There was nothing about ants! Yet something must be done and instantly—the feet were the worst.