Jack stood a moment on the threshold to gaze at the three occupants. He was rather like a sailor who fears foul weather and has not the courage to read the sky.
“I’m glad you’ve come, young man,” said Mrs. Wren, getting up to receive him. And she added almost at once, for it was never her way to beat about the bush, “We are giving her the finest talking to she has ever had in her life.”
Jack nearly groaned. The look of the three of them had told him already that she must have made a fearful hash of things.
By now the Tenderfoot had risen very high in Mrs. Wren’s favor. To begin with he would one day be the indubitable sixth Duke of Bridport—a handicap, no doubt, in the sight of some types of democrat, but apparently not, in the eyes of Mrs. Wren, an insuperable barrier. Again, she was a pretty shrewd judge of a man, and this one had passed all his examinations so far with flying colors. He was absolutely straightforward, absolutely honorable; moreover, he knew his own mind—whereby he had a signal advantage over his stable companion, who, in spite of great merits, was lacking in character.
“Yes, we are setting her to rights,” said Milly, wrinkling a nose of charming pugnacity. The face of the culprit was tense and rather piteous, but Jack’s glance at it was perfectly remorseless.
“I knew she would,” he groaned.
“Knew she would what?” demanded Mrs. Wren.
“Let Uncle Albert down her,” was the prompt rejoinder.
“That didn’t want much guessing,” said Milly bitterly.
“Bridport-House-itis! That’s her trouble,” said Mrs. Wren. “And she seems to have quite a bad form of the disease. I can’t understand such a girl, I can’t really. To me she’s unnatural. If I found people ‘coming the heavy’ over me, I should just set my back to the wall and say, ‘Very well, my fine friends, I’m now going to let you see that Jane Wren is every bit as good as you are.’”