The precious moments were fleeting, and Bruey being still in the ascendant, she asked apropos of nothing:
"Please, sir, do you think Master Montagu and Edmund are little workers?"
"Edmund certainly isn't," Mr. Wycherly replied decidedly; "he's an idle young dog"—here he chuckled—"but all the same he can do whatever he sets himself to do. Montagu, on the contrary, is naturally industrious. He loves knowledge for its own sake. Why do you ask?" and Mr. Wycherly looked inquiringly at Jane-Anne.
She was mystified. That anybody should call anybody else "an idle young dog" in that tone of affectionate amusement was in itself most puzzling.
"I suppose," she said, deliberately paraphrasing a favourite remark of Miss Stukely's, "we can all be workers, 'you in your small corner; I in mine.'"
"Quite so," Mr. Wycherly assented politely, though he in his turn was somewhat staggered by Jane-Anne's gently patronising tone. Had the Greek nymph of the afternoon turned into an amazing little prig in the evening? It was evident that this child was a quick-change artist in more than the matter of make-up.
As for Jane-Anne, she felt curiously flattened out. This courteous, kindly old gentleman made her feel incredibly small. Bruey, she was certain, or even the apostolic Miss Stukely herself, would find it exceedingly difficult to approach Mr. Wycherly on the subject of his soul. And then and there was lighted in the youthful mind of Jane-Anne one little candle of common-sense which illuminated this dark and difficult situation with the bright suggestion that possibly Mr. Wycherly's soul was Mr. Wycherly's business and not hers; and just at that very crucial moment she heard him saying:
"By the way, child, isn't that dress rather hot and heavy for this summer weather? Don't you think we'd better see about something else if you've not got anything thinner?"
She jumped to her feet, clasping and unclasping her hands in an agony of earnestness. Where frocks were concerned souls had a poor chance with Jane-Anne.
"Oh, sir," she cried, "it's a hateful old dress, but my two cotton frocks were left at the Bainbridge and aunt said we couldn't ask for them as I'd left, and they said I could keep this and my best, as I'd got them with me, but I wish they hadn't. Mightn't some poorer child than me have this? It is so hideous and uncomfortable."