‘Why, what have you been doing now?’ inquired Ruth, keeping her temper with difficulty.
Angela stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth, and recovered sufficient control over herself to take it out again and make her confession.
‘Last week,’ she faltered, ‘she asked me to help her with her French; and–and–I was cross, and–and–I wouldn’t.’
She burst into tears again, as Charlotte Bigley looked up from the book she was pretending to read and put in a curt remark.
‘Who’s she?’ she demanded bluntly.
Angela stopped crying to stare at her. ‘You know fast enough, Charlotte!’ she mumbled indistinctly.
Charlotte tossed her head scornfully. ‘If you mean Barbara Berkeley, why on earth can’t you say so?’ she exclaimed. ‘She hasn’t lost her name because she fell off the rings, has she?’
Mary Wells spoke her mind solemnly. ‘We all know you have no feeling, Charlotte Bigley,’ she was beginning, when some one near the window announced that the Doctor had just driven round the corner of the house.
This in itself was enough to reduce Angela to further depths of contrition. ‘What shall I do,’ she wailed, ‘if she dies before I can ask her forgiveness?’
Margaret Hulme suddenly stood over her, and shook her by the shoulder.