“But why you drownded ’em?” asked Joan.
“Eh! you got to drown kittens, little Missie,” said old Groombridge. “Else ud be too many of um. But ollays there’s one or so kep’. Callum Jubilee I reckon. ’Tis all the go this year agin.”
Joan had to tell some one. She turned about towards the house, but long before she could find a hearer her sorrowful news burst through her. Aunt Phœbe writing Ruskinian about the marvellous purity of childish intuitions was suddenly disturbed by the bitter cry of Niobe Joan going past beneath the window. Joan had a voluminous voice when she was fully roused.
“They been ’n dwouwnded my kittays, Petah. They been ’n dwouwnded my kittays.”
§ 6
It seemed to Mary that Lady Charlotte’s invitation came as a “perfect godsend.” It was at once used to its utmost value to distract the two little flushed and tearful things from their distresses. Great expectations were aroused. That very afternoon they were to go out to tea to Chastlands, a lovely place; they were to have a real ride in a real carriage, not a cab like the station-cab that smells of straw, but a carriage; and Mary was coming too, she was going to wear her best hat with the red flower and enjoy herself “no end,” and there would be cake and all sorts of things and a big shrubbery to play in and a flower garden—oh! miles bigger than our garden. “Only you mustn’t go picking the flowers,” said Mary. “Lady Charlotte won’t like that.”
Was Auntie Phyllis coming too?
No, Auntie wasn’t coming too; she’d love to come, but she couldn’t....
It all began very much as Mary had promised. The carriage with the white horse was waiting punctually at two o’clock on the high road above the house. There was a real carpet, green with a yellow coat-of-arms, on the floor of the carriage, and the same coat-of-arms on the panel of the door; the brass door-handle was so bright and attractive that Mary had to tell Joan to keep her greedy little hands off it or she would fall out. They drove through pine woods for a time and then across a great common with geese on it, and then up a deep-hedged, winding, uphill road and so to an open road that lay over a great cornfield, and then by a snug downland village of thatched white cottages very gay with flowers. And so to a real lodge with a garden round it and a white-aproned gate-keeper, which impressed Mary very favourably.
“It’s a sort of park she has,” said Mary.