"Why not?" from Miss 'Hontas, plaiting Selina's heavy flaxen hair.
"He didn't want me to want to come so much," said Selina, neither very lucidly nor elegantly, she felt.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Thirty-six hours later, Miss Diana Talbot in a comfortably sensible white dress, with a triangle of lace cap on her portly head, stood at the top of the porch-steps of her leased hotel of white clap-boards, the same set in a flanking of moss-draped live oaks with a nice blue lake behind.
From the station omnibus at the foot of these steps, with their eyes taking in this pleasing picture of establishment, descended Miss Marcia Boswell, tall and quietly distinguished, Miss Pocahontas, charming and smiling, and Selina in the jaunty new skirt and jacket of blue and the back-flung veil, flushed and altogether lovely, her young eyes dewy with something of joy and more of big and eager wonder.
Miss Diana's countenance as they came up the steps to her, however, was by no means so comfortable in its aspect as her comely person. It looked absorbed and anxious, nor did she mince matters nor hesitate in confiding them. Such was not her way.
"My dears," she announced, "it is ghastly. Not an application, not an entry but those two original Ealings. Everything in readiness for an ideal winter school for delicate girls, but the pupils. I thought best to break it to you at once!"
Following an early supper, Miss Diana, the Boswells and Selina gathered on the wide gallery along the south side of the charming old clap-board hotel. The immediate point to decide was, what was to be done? Selina swallowed hard, and then regained herself. She was a little lady, Mamma and Auntie's care had made her that, to give them their dues, and her private troubles now were her private troubles and must be regarded by her as such. She was the favored young friend of the Boswells, and Miss Talbot's guest, but not their first nor their chief consideration even under the circumstances, nor must she expect to be. Miss Pocahontas as though divining something of the nature of Selina's thoughts, leaned across from her chair at this point and took the pretty hand. It threatened to unnerve again, but once more Selina regained herself, and this time to steady herself further, looked about her from her place on the broad and lovely gallery.