Aunt Truth doesn’t know anything about all this, for Laura is a different girl when she is with her or Dr. Paul; not that she is deceitful, but that she is honestly anxious for their good opinion. You remember Aunt Truth’s hobby that we should never defend ourselves by attacking any one else, and none of us would ever complain, if we were hung, drawn, and quartered.
Laura was miffed at having to play Audrey, but we didn’t know that she could come until the last moment, and we were going to leave that part out.
“I don’t believe you appreciate my generosity in taking this thankless part,” she said to Bell, when we were rehearsing. “Nobody would ever catch you playing second fiddle, my dear. All leading parts reserved for Miss Winship, by order of the authors, I suppose.”
“Indeed, Laura,” Bell said, “if we had known you were coming we would have offered you the best part, but I only took Rosalind because I knew the lines, and the girls insisted.”
“You’ve trained the girls well—hasn’t she, Geoffrey?” asked Laura, with a queer kind of laugh.
But I will leave the unpleasant subject. I should not have spoken of it at all except that she has made me so uncomfortable to-day that it is fresh in my mind. Bell and Polly and I have talked the matter all over, and are going to try and make her like us, whether she wants to or not. We have agreed to be just as polite and generous as we possibly can, and see if she won’t “come round,” for she is perfectly delighted with the camp, and wants to stay a month.
Polly says she is going to sing “Home Sweet Home” to her every night, and drop double doses of the homoeopathic cure for home-sickness into her tea, with a view of creating the disease.
Good-bye, and a hundred kisses from your loving
Margery Daw.