Audrey's face clouded. She was disappointed at not being able to put her request to her mother, and she was annoyed at being reproved. Audrey never could endure reproof.
"I will try," she answered glumly; "but it is almost impossible to get quiet here. The children are so noisy, and they never do what they are told."
Mr. Carlyle sighed. Dr. Gray's eyebrows lifted a little. "They are very imitative," he said. "If you explain to them how necessary it is, for their mother's sake, and set them the example, I will answer for it that they will be good."
But Audrey only tossed her head, and retired to her bedroom.
Presently, after what seemed a long time, Faith came up, carrying Joan, asleep in her arms. She looked tired and hot. "She has dropped off at last," she panted, "I am going to put her in her cot. I think it is the warm weather that makes her so restless. She hasn't slept for hours."
Audrey did not reply. She sat on the chair beside her bed, and watched her sister lay the sleeping child carefully on her pillow, without disturbing her; then draw the blanket carefully over her.
That done to her satisfaction, Faith flung herself on her own bed with a sigh of content. "Oh!" she sighed, "how lovely it is to lie down. I am so tired, and my head aches so—and my feet."
The warm days had come in suddenly; though it was only April they seemed to have stepped from winter right into summer, and everyone felt it.
Audrey looked at her sister with disapproving eyes. "A nice sight your bed will be, when you get off it, and look at mine. Joan did that. With that great slop on the floor, too, the room isn't fit to look at."
"I should think this heat would soon dry up anything," said Faith placidly, "no floor could stay wet long, even if one wanted it to." She turned over, and stretched her aching limbs contentedly. "If my bed is untidy, I must tidy it again—that is all. I am so dead tired I must lie down somewhere. Where have you been? In with mother?"