“I thought you were very ill,” she said. “We all thought so—Miss Franklin, your form mistress, and all.”
“I’m not a bit ill,” I said. I did not want Augusta’s sympathy, or, indeed, to say anything at all to her just then.
“Then why didn’t you come to school?”
I was silent. Augusta took my hand. She pulled it through her arm.
“I think I understand,” she said. “You were ill in mind; that is the worst sort of illness, isn’t it?”
She glanced round at Mrs Moore, who was trotting along behind.
“Go home, mother; I’ll follow you.”
“You’ll lose yourself, Gussie.”
“Don’t call me Gussie. I’ll follow you.”
Mrs Moore said something to me; she was quite nice and commonplace, and did not allude to the subject of the “new mamma.”