“No, no, I’ve been through an exciting time this morning, seeing a lawyer, and—and other things. Now go on, dears, tell me what you’ve come to see me about.”
“Well, then, I must go back to the beginning,” said Pamela. “We waited and waited to hear from you after you’d seen this lady, and then Miss Willett heard from her, I think, for she seemed much disturbed, and she wrote to papa. And she wouldn’t tell us what he answered, but yesterday a lady came to Miss Willett’s and said that she was our aunt——”
“Your aunt!” interrupted Audrey sharply.
“Yes. She said she was sent by papa to take us away to live with her at ‘The Briars’——”
“The Briars!”
Audrey forgot her prudence, and uttered the word in a high key.
“Yes, yes, the house where you were staying.”
“Go on, go on.”
“She wanted us to go with her at once, but Miss Willett, though, as she told us afterwards, she had heard from papa that our aunt was to fetch us away from school, didn’t like to let us go.”
“The truth was,” put in Babs bluntly, “that Miss Willett didn’t like the look of this aunt of ours any more than we did.”