“There is no possible objection,” said Miss Lentaigne, “to your meeting your cousin at the train, but if you are to do so you cannot spend the morning in your boat.”
Priscilla thought she could.
“I’m only going as far as Delginish to bathe,” she said. “I’ll be back in lots of time.”
“Be sure you are,” said Sir Lucius.
“After being out in the boat,” said Miss Lentaigne, “you will be both dirty and untidy, certainly not fit to meet your cousin at the train.”
Priscilla, who had a good deal of experience of boats, knew that her aunt’s fears were well founded. But she had not yet reached the age at which a girl thinks it desirable to be clean, tidy and well dressed when she goes to meet a strange cousin. She treated Miss Lentaigne’s opposition as beneath contempt.
“I must bathe,” she said, “It’s the first day of the hols.”
“Holidays,” said Miss Lentaigne.
“Sylvia Courtney,” said Priscilla, “who won the prize for English literature at school calls them ‘hols.’”
“That,” said Sir Lucius, “settles it. The authority of any one who wins a first prize in English literature——”