“What did you have to eat?” said Mrs Dawson. “Was there anything that specially took your fancy?”
“Ah, yes—tell us that!” cried Mademoiselle, “for I could copy it for these dear, most select and amiable ladies. I should so love to give them the benefit of my French experience.”
“I don’t know what we had to eat,” said Brenda. “Perhaps Nina could tell you to-morrow—she is our greedy one.”
“Poor little thing!” said Mrs Simpkins. “You’ve let her off her accounts, I see, and that’s a blessing. Now, Miss Carlton, you won’t take it amiss, but if you will allow a motherly body like myself to speak, you won’t be too harsh with that poor child. She’s a good child, and means well; and why in the name of goodness she should be pestered with that account-book and pencil at all hours of the day beats me.”
“Is this what would be so called a secret?” asked Mademoiselle, “for, if so, I will—to speak in the figurative way—stop up my ears.”
“Oh, no,” said Brenda, “it is nothing: I am teaching my youngest pupil a lesson, and these ladies—even dear Mrs Simpkins—fail to understand.”
“Ah—how I you do admire!” said Mademoiselle. “I also have my methods. We, dear Miss Carlton, will have much in common. We will talk together of our pupils and our wrongs.”
“For my part, I am getting sleepy,” said Miss Price, “and the conversation is not nearly so interesting as I hoped it would have been.”
She looked regretfully at the empty ice plates and thought of the bill she would have to pay at Jones’ on the morrow.
“But what did you suppose I would have to talk about?” asked Brenda, putting the last morsel of delicious strawberry ice into her mouth as she spoke.