“Well, it was just the one garment that she should never have worn. She wears old-fashioned stays, and though people may think they don’t matter in a tea-gown, I think stays have more effect on the general cut of a tea-gown than they have on any other garment. I should like to have dressed that lady in a plain coat and skirt from my own tailor, with a loose white front, and a good black hat. But I don’t think anybody would know her.”
“Well, it’s no business of yours, little woman,” said the doctor, cheerily. “And, after all, it’s a new family—children—infantile diseases—servants—people apparently thoroughly well-to-do. Bought the house—done it up inside and out. It isn’t for you and I to quarrel with our bread and butter.”
CHAPTER IV
SKATING ON THIN ICE
Was it, I wonder, a mother who first evolved the proverb: “Where ignorance is bliss ’twere folly to be wise”?
It cannot be said that as a family the inhabitants of Ye Dene were a success at Northampton Park. I have already said that they made friends slowly, and in saying so I was of course speaking of Mr. and Mrs. Whittaker and not of the children. The children, on the contrary, made friends very quickly and as quickly got through them. I doubt indeed if two more unpopular children had ever attended the Northampton Park High School. Fortunately for them, I mean for their peace of mind as the time went by, Mrs. Whittaker was not aware of the real reason for this state of affairs.
“I hear,” she remarked one day to long-legged Maud, who had been for a couple of years advanced to the dignity of a pigtail, “I hear that Gwendoline Hammond had a party yesterday.”
Maudie went very red and looked extremely uncomfortable. “I—I—did hear something about it,” she stammered.