“Where’s Katie?” asked her father. “She’s generally down before anyone.”
Henry, who, in the contemplation of his mother, had forgotten, for the moment, his sister’s strange behaviour, said:
“Oh! she’ll be late, I expect. I saw her go out about seven. Had to see Penhaligan about something important, she told me. Went out into all that storm.”
As he spoke eight o’clock struck.
Mrs. Trenchard looked up.
“Went out to see Penhaligan?” she asked.
“Yes, Mother. She didn’t tell me why.”
Aunt Betty came in. Her little body, her cheerful smile, her air as of one who was ready to be pleased with anything, might lead a careless observer into the error of supposing that she was a quite ordinary old maid with a fancy for knitting, the Church of England, and hot water with her meals. He would be wrong in his judgment; her sharp little eyes, the corners of her mouth betrayed a sense of humour that, although it had never been encouraged by the family, provided much wise penetration and knowledge. Any casual acquaintance in half an hour’s talk would have discovered in Aunt Betty wisdom and judgment to which her own family would, until the day of its decent and honourable death, be entirely blind.
Just now she had lost her spectacles.
“My spectacles,” she said. “Hum-hum—Very odd. I had them just before tea. I was working over in that corner—I never moved from there except once when—when—Oh! there they are! No, they are not. And I played ‘Patience’ there, too, in the same corner. Very odd.”