They all paused for want of breath. Rosie went up and laid her fat red hand on Lilias' knee.
"I said it was you he stared at," she remarked. "You wouldn't like him to be vexed, would you?"
The words had scarcely passed her lips before the door was opened, and the object of the children's universal commiseration entered. A deep and awful silence took possession of them. Lilias clutched Rosie's hand, and felt an inane desire to rush from the room with her.
Too late. The terrible infant flew to Adrian Carr, and clasping her arms around his legs, looked up into his face.
"Never mind," she said, "it is wrong of Gussie, but it isn't Lilias' fault. She wouldn't like to vex you, 'cause you stare so at her."
"Nursie says that you admire Lilias; do you?" asked Betty.
"Oh, poor Gussie!" exclaimed the others, their interest in Lilias and Carr being after all but a very secondary matter. "We all do hope you won't do anything dreadful to her. You can, you know. You can excommunicate her, can't you?"
"But what has Augusta done?" exclaimed Carr, turning a somewhat flushed face in the direction not of Lilias, but of Marjory. "What a frightful confusion—and what does it mean?"
Marjory explained as well as she was able. Carr had lately taken upon himself to overhaul the books of the lending library. He believed in literature as a very elevating lever, but he thought that books should not only be carefully selected in the mass, but in lending should be given with a special view to the needs of the individual who borrowed. Before Gerald's marriage Marjory had given away the books, but since then, for various reasons, they had drifted into Augusta's hands, and through their means this rather spirited and daring young lady had been able to inflict a small succession of mild tyrannies. For instance, poor Miss Yates, the weak-eyed and weak-spirited village dressmaker, was dosed with a series of profound and dull theology; and Macallister, the sexton and shoemaker, a canny Scot, who looked upon all fiction as the "work of the de'il," was put into a weekly passion with the novels of Charles Reade and Wilkie Collins.
These were extreme cases, but Augusta certainly had the knack of giving the wrong book to the wrong person. Carr heard mutterings and grumbling. The yearly subscriptions of a shilling a piece diminished, and he thought it full time to take the matter in hand. He himself would distribute the village literature every Saturday, at twelve o'clock.