Tony, though taciturn, was not unobservant. "I think," he said solemnly, "Meg's more tired nor me. P'raps you'd better take her."
Meg laughed, and what the rain and wind could not do, Tony managed. Her cheeks grew rosy.
"I'm afraid I should be rather heavy, Tony dear, but it's kind of you to think of it."
She looked up at Captain Middleton and smiled again. What a kind world it was! And really that tall young man was rather a pleasant person. So it fell out that Tony was carried the rest of the way, and he had a longer ride than little Fay; for his steed mounted the staircase soberly, keeping pace with Meg; they even paused to take breath on the landings. And it came about that Captain Middleton went back into the flat with the children, showing no disposition to go away, and Jan could hardly do less than ask him to share the tea she had laid in the dining-room.
There he got a shock, for Meg came to tea in her cap and apron.
Out of doors she wore a long, warm coat that entirely covered the green linen frock, and a little round fur hat. This last was a concession to Jan, who hated the extinguisher. So Meg looked very much like any other girl. A little younger,
perhaps, than any young woman of twenty-five has any business to look, but pretty in her queer, compelling way.
That she looked even prettier in her uniform Captain Middleton would have been the first to allow; but he hated it nevertheless. There seemed to him something incongruous and wrong for a girl with a smile like that to be anybody's nursemaid.
To be sure, Miss Ross was a brick, and this queer little servant of hers called her by her Christian name and contradicted her flatly twice in the course of tea. Miss Morton certainly did not seem to be downtrodden ... but she wore a cap and an apron—a very becoming Quakerish cap ... without any strings ... and—"it's a d——d shame," was the outcome of all Captain Middleton's reflections.
"Would the man never go?" Jan wondered, when after a prolonged and hilarious tea he followed the enraptured children back to the drawing-room and did tricks with the fire-irons.