The next instant the horrified man found that Miss Tredgold had kissed him calmly and with vigor on each cheek. Even his own children were never permitted to kiss Mr. Dale. To tell the truth, he was the last sort of person anybody would care to kiss. His face resembled a piece of parchment, being much withered and wrinkled and dried up. There was an occasion in the past when Verena had taken his scholarly hand and raised it to her lips, but even that form of endearment he objected to.
“I forgive you, dear,” he said; “but please don’t do it again. We can love each other without these marks of an obsolete and forgotten age. Kissing, my dear, is too silly to be endured in our day.”
That Miss Tredgold should kiss him was therefore an indignity which the miserable man was scarcely likely to get over as long as he lived.
“And now, girls,” said the good lady, turning round and facing her astonished nieces, “I have a conviction that your father and I would have a more comfortable conversation if you were not present. Leave the room, therefore, my dears. Go quietly and in an orderly fashion.”
“Perhaps, children, it would be best,” said Mr. Dale.
He felt as though he could be terribly rude, but he made an effort not to show his feelings.
“There is no other possible way out of it,” he said to himself. “I must be very frank. I must tell her quite plainly that she cannot stay. It will be easier for me to be frank without the children than with them.”
So the girls left the room. Penelope, going last, turned a plump and bewildered face towards her aunt.
But Miss Tredgold took no more notice of Penelope than she did of the others. When the last pair of feet had vanished down the passage, she went to the door and locked it.
“What are you doing that for?” asked Mr. Dale.