“Indeed it is, when your ladyship makes it up,” said Rosy; while Hyacinth wondered at this strange phenomenon of a peer’s daughter (for he knew she must be that) performing the functions of a housemaid.
“I say, now, you haven’t been doing that again to-day?” Muniment asked, punching the mattress of the invalid with a vigorous hand.
“Pray, who would, if I didn’t?” Lady Aurora inquired. “It only takes a minute, if one knows how.” Her manner was jocosely apologetic, and she seemed to plead guilty to having been absurd; in the dim light Hyacinth thought he saw her blush, as if she were much embarrassed. In spite of her blushing, her appearance and manner suggested to him a personage in a comedy. She sounded the letter r peculiarly.
“I can do it, beautifully. I often do it, when Mrs Major doesn’t come up,” Paul Muniment said, continuing to thump his sister’s couch in an appreciative but somewhat subversive manner.
“Oh, I have no doubt whatever!” Lady Aurora exclaimed, quickly. “Mrs Major must have so very much to do.”
“Not in the making-up of beds, I’m afraid; there are only two or three, down there, for so many,” Paul Muniment remarked loudly, and with a kind of incongruous cheerfulness.
“Yes, I have thought a great deal about that. But there wouldn’t be room for more, you know,” said Lady Aurora, this time in a very serious tone.
“There’s not much room for a family of that sort anywhere—thirteen people of all ages and sizes,” the young man rejoined. “The world’s pretty big, but there doesn’t seem room.”
“We are also thirteen at home;” said Lady Aurora, laughing again. “We are also rather crowded.”
“Surely you don’t mean at Inglefield?” Rosy inquired eagerly, in her dusky nook.