And when they got home, Flossie not feeling quite so bad as when they set off, Mrs. Stubbs and May and "that Sarah" actually had not come back. It really was too bad, and Flossie sat down in the schoolroom window to watch for them with a face like a thunder cloud and a heart in which every outraged and injured feeling capable of being felt by weak human nature seemed to be seething and struggling at once.
If only Tom had come back, it would not have been so bad. But Charles, the indoor servant, had taken him and Johnnie down to Seven Dials to buy some guinea-pigs, and Seven Dials being a long way from South Kensington, they could not possibly have got back by that time if they had tried ever so. Poor Flossie!
So she sat and brooded--brooded over what she was pleased to call her wrongs. She would not so much have minded not going out with the "broom" if only she might have gone with Charles and Tom and Johnnie to enjoy the somewhat doubtful delights of Seven Dials. That, however, Mrs. Stubbs had resolutely and peremptorily refused to allow. So it happened that Flossie sat in the window waiting for their return.
At last they came. She saw them get out of the carriage and disappear within the house; she saw the carriage drive round to the stables.
And then there was a long pause. But they none of them seemed to think of coming upstairs, even then. Poor Flossie kicked at the window-board more noisily than ever, and in vain Miss Clark, driven almost to desperation, cried, "Flossie, will you be quiet?"
And then the door opened quietly, and May came in, looking radiant. Flossie felt more ill-used even than before.
"Oh, you are here, Flossie. I've been looking for you everywhere," she remarked.
"Well, you can't have looked very hard, or you'd have found me," Flossie snapped. Then with a fierce glance at the parcel in her sister's hand, she blurted out, "You've been having ices!"
"Yes, we have," answered May; "but you needn't look like that, Flossie; I've brought you back a great deal more than both our ices cost."
"What have you brought?" half mollified.