"Never you mind whether they've taken candles or not, you go up and see," commanded his wife.
Sighing, Bowers obeyed, but he soon reappeared with the intelligence that it was just as he had said: no one was upstairs. "I tell you what," he said. "They've gone to meet the others, and they wanted the fire lit for when they come in."
"It does look like it," Mrs. Bowers admitted. "And if that's what they have done, I'm not going up myself till they're in. I know Miss Margaret, none better! Never was there a child like her for catching colds, and the first thing she'll do when she gets in is to pop right into bed with a hot bottle, or my name's not Emma Bowers." With that she proceeded majestically back to the kitchen, and resumed her seat by the fire. She picked up her crochet again, but her eyes kept lifting to the clock on the mantelpiece, and when the hands pointed to eleven, she could no longer contain herself. "I'll give Mr. Peter a piece of my mind when he comes in!" she said wrathfully. "When did you take that scuttle to the library, Bowers?"
"I dunno. Bit after ten, I think," Bowers answered, deep in the racing columns of a newspaper.
"Then they've been out a full hour! I never did in all my life! Hark, was that the front door? For the love of goodness, stop reading that nasty trash!"
Bowers put the paper down meekly, and listened. Voices sounded in the hall. "That's the master I can hear," he said.
Mrs. Bowers once more arose and sallied forth. In the hall Mrs. Bosanquet was unwinding the inevitable tulle from her head. As Mrs. Bowers came into the hall Charles said: "Ten o'clock would have been a godly hour at which to have taken our leave. I shall never forgive you, Aunt Lilian. Never."
"I'm sorry if you were anxious to go, my dear," was the placid reply, "but I was in the middle of a very interesting discussion with the Vicar. I found him most enlightened: not in the least hide-bound, as I had feared might be the case."
Celia saw Mrs. Bowers. "Hullo, still up, Emma?" she said.
"Miss Celia, where's Miss Margaret and Mr. Peter? Didn't you meet them?"