“Why, all the company I am likely to get up here is burglars,” I answered lugubriously, with my chin between my hands.
The start she gave startled me in my turn.
“Burglars! What burglars? What are you talking about?”
I looked up amazed at the effect of my words on Sarah, whom, of all people in the world, I should have considered strong-minded. It was promotion for me to be soothing Sarah.
“Why, I have more courage than you!” I said, laughing lightly. “I’m not afraid of them. If they came, they would soon go down again when they found there was nothing to take. Would you be afraid to sleep up here alone, Sarah?”
But she hardly took the trouble to answer me except by a nod; her black eyes were fixed upon me as I spoke, as if she would, and almost as if she could, penetrate to my inmost soul. Then, as if satisfied with the result of her scrutiny, she relapsed into her usual hard, cold manner, and, answering my good-night shortly, left me alone.
Then I made up my mind definitely on a point that had often occupied me vaguely, and decided that Mrs. Rayner and Sarah were, in different ways, without exception, the two most unpleasant and disagreeable women I had ever met. And after that I went to bed and dreamt, not of a burglar, but of quite a different person.
The next day was Sunday, and there were two strangers in church who attracted the attention of all the congregation. They were two fair-complexioned, light-haired girls who sat in the Reades’ pew, and who had evidently spared no expense on rather tasteless and unbecoming toilettes. I caught myself feeling not sorry that they were ill-dressed, and glad that one was plain and that the one who was pretty was dreadfully freckled; and I wondered how it was that I had grown so ill-natured. Mr. Laurence Reade sat between them, and he shared his hymn-book with the pretty one; and I did so wish it had been with the plain one! And when we came out of church, and he and his sisters and the two girls trooped out together, the breaking up of the group left him to pair off again with the pretty one.
I remember noticing, as Haidee and I walked home together, that the midges teased me more than they had ever done that summer, that the sun was more scorching, and that it was just as dusty as if we had not had any rain at all. It was a horrid day.
Mr. Rayner asked us, at dinner, if we had noticed the two girls with the pretty hair in Mr. Reade’s pew, and said that he had heard that the one with the blue eyes was the future Mrs. Laurence Reade, and that it would be an excellent match for both of them.