“Had you not better just think calmly over it? If you return to St. Benet’s without Miss Merton, you will get her into a scrape.”
“Do you think I care for that? Oh, she has behaved disgracefully! She has told Miss Heath a lie. I shall explain matters the very moment I go back.”
Priscilla was not often in a passion, but she felt in one now. She lost her shyness, and her voice rose without constraint.
“I am not supposed to know the ways of society,” she said, “but I don’t think I want to know much about this sort of society.” And she got up, prepared to leave the room.
The ladies, who had been gossiping at her side, turned at the sound of her agitation. They saw a plain, badly-dressed girl, with a frock conveniently short for the muddy streets, but by no means in tone with her present elegant surroundings, standing up and contradicting, or at least appearing to contradict, Geoffrey Hammond, one of the best known men at St. Hilda’s, a Senior Wrangler, too. What did this gauche girl mean? Most people were deferential to Hammond, but she seemed to be scolding him.
Prissie for the time being became more interesting even than the winter fashions. The ladies drew a step or two nearer to enjoy the little comedy.
Priscilla noticed no one, but Hammond felt these good ladies in the air. His checks burned, and he wished himself well out of his present position.
“If you will sit down, Miss Peel,” he said, in a low, firm voice, “I think I can give you good reasons for not rushing away in this headlong fashion.”
“Well, what are they?” said Prissie. Hammond’s voice had a sufficiently compelling power to make her sit down once more on her window-ledge.
“Don’t you think,” he said, seating himself in front of her, “that we may as well keep this discussion to ourselves?”