"Why! Do you mind being laughed at so much as all that," Nancy said. "I should have thought that as a governess in a school you would have got used to it. For schoolgirls are awful quizzes. Perhaps, though, as you were a governess they did it behind your back."
"They certainly did not do it to my face," Margaret said.
"Oh, well, they will here," said Nancy. "Everybody chaffs everybody else in this house pretty freely. What you must do is to chaff back; but if you don't feel equal to that just at first, just grin, and let them think you don't care a rap."
At that moment heavy footsteps were heard in the passage and Mrs. Danvers came into the hall.
"Ah, here you are, Miss Carson. I could not think where you had got to. I just stopped to tell my shameless young folk what I thought of them for laughing like that at a stranger. Nancy, you lazy girl, you ought to have been watching the match instead of lying here. It was a close thing. Maud won. Really she has a wonderful eye. There is simply no game she cannot excel in if she chose. She——" But then Mrs. Danvers catching sight of Margaret's miserable expression pulled herself up short just as she had been about to launch forth into a glowing account of her daughter's skill. "But all the same, it was shameful of them to laugh at you like that, Miss Carson. Your first night too, when you are not used to them."
"Just what I said, Aunt Mary," chimed in Nancy, who had seen that Mrs. Danvers casual treatment of the incident which had brought such mortification to the new governess was making the latter feel still more lost and ill at ease. "She'll soon get used to it though, and will care just as little as anybody when her turn comes to be rotted."
"And above all things keep your temper, my dear," said Mrs. Danvers. "But that remark," she added hastily, seeing that Margaret looked more miserable even than before, "is not intended as a reproof, for the way they went on was enough to make any one lose their temper, but as a friendly warning. They'll tease you unmercifully if they find you lose your temper, and I shan't be able to stop it. And now, my dear, unless you like to come back to the billiard-room and show them that you don't care a rap for their laughter, I'll take you to your room. Which would you like to do?"
"Oh, go to my room, please," said Margaret hastily, who felt that on no account would she face any one of the Danvers' family again that night.
"Did you lose your temper?" inquired Nancy. "Then I'm jolly glad to hear it. Listen to the wretches laughing still. So many to one wasn't fair. I hope you gave it to them hot. They deserved it."
"So they did," said Mrs. Danvers heartily, and Margaret, who had yet to learn Mrs. Danvers always sided with the last speaker, took courage from that remark. It showed at all events, she thought, that her sudden passionate outburst had not caused Mrs. Danvers to take a dislike to her.