“You are very silly,” said Mabel. “Can I do nothing?”
“I will talk to you afterwards, Priscilla,” said Annie.—“Let her alone now, May. She had a bad time crossing, and I dare say would rather go to bed.—You will look at all these things in a different light in the morning, Pris.”
“We shall have to be off fairly early in the morning,” said Mabel, “so you may as well go to bed if you are dead-tired, Priscie.—Parker, will you get some tea and anything else that Miss Weir may require, and have it brought to her room?”
“Thank you,” said Priscilla. She stood, tall, awkward, and ungracious, before the other two. They felt that she was so, and that there was something in her expression which made them both, deep down in their hearts, feel small. Annie could not help saying to herself, “I wouldn’t give up the chance of wearing pretty clothes;” and Mabel was thinking, “If only Priscilla were well dressed she would look handsomer than either of us.”
A minute later Priscilla turned to leave the room. “I am very sorry, girls,” she said.—“Perhaps, Mabel,” she added, “as you are leaving in the morning, I ought to see Lady Lushington now.”
“Oh, dear me!” said Mabel; “you will put Aunt Hennie out enormously if you worry her now.”
“Still, I think I ought. I am terribly sorry, but she ought to understand immediately my feelings in this matter.”
“Let her go; let her speak to your aunt,” whispered Annie.
“Very well,” said Mabel. “You will find Aunt Henrietta,” she continued, “waiting for us all in the drawing-room.”
Priscilla immediately left the room. She walked across the broad landing to the private sitting-room which Lady Lushington occupied in the hotel. The latter was standing by a window, when the door opened, and a tall, rather untidy girl dressed in dark-blue serge of no graceful cut, with her hair brushed back from her forehead and her face much agitated, appeared before that lady.