Matilda hurried back to the house. She crept softly upstairs, reached her bedroom without anyone seeing her, and came down to early dinner looking subdued and dull.
"Did you enjoy your walk?" asked Kate, as she helped her to some soup.
"It was so cold that I did not care to go out," said Matilda, without a moment's hesitation.
"And did you really spend the last couple of hours in your room! You must be simply frozen."
"I did not wish to disturb you and Mr. Danvers," said Matilda, with one of her sly looks.
Kate burst into a fit of laughter.
"Oh, my dears," she said, turning to the rest of the party, "I never had such a completely jolly time in the whole course of my life; the awful way that little man did rate me! 'You are a young scoundrel, sir!' he said. 'How dare you profane your lips with the words of the greatest scholar, the most magnificent intellect of all time, when your gross ignorance——' Oh, but I need not go on, I was annihilated, simply annihilated, and I could not stop him. He kept on glaring at me, and assuring me that I was worthy of being expelled from any boys' school in the kingdom. It was a relief when Maurice came in. But oh, how funny he was, and how thoroughly I like him, notwithstanding the fact that I never was so scolded before in the whole course of my life!"