“How unfortunate it was that Mrs. Hilyard couldn’t reach you!” she said, when she got Ann to herself for a few moments. “You must have felt very uncomfortable.”
“Uncomfortable?” Ann’s clear eyes met Miss Caroline’s blue bead ones inquiringly.
“Dreadfully uncomfortable, I should think”—with sympathy. “You—you had nothing on, I suppose”—lowering her voice impressively—“but your bathing-gown?”
“Nothing at all,” answered Ann, maintaining her gravity with difficulty. “One hasn’t usually, you know—to go into the water.”
“But you had to be carried out of the water, hadn’t you? You must have found it most embarrassing! Most embarrassing!”
“I don’t think I did,” said Ann.
“Not?”—chidingly. “Oh, Miss Lovell, I can’t believe that! Any nice-minded girl—I’m sure, if it had been me I should have fainted out of pure shame at finding myself in a man’s arms—without a peignoir!”
“Well, that was just it, you see. I had fainted. So”—the corners of her mouth trembling in spite of herself—“I wasn’t able to put on my peignoir.”
“I see.” Miss Caroline looked slightly relieved. “Then you didn’t really know any more about it than one does when having a tooth out under gas? What a good thing! Dear me! What a good thing! And I’m sure Mr. Coventry will try to forget all about it. Any gentleman would. Really, such a—a contretemps makes one feel one ought almost to be fully clothed for bathing, doesn’t it?”
She hopped up like a hungry little bird that has just been fed and flitted across the room to talk to Mrs. Carberry, and Ann wondered dryly if she were confiding in the M.F.H.‘s wife particulars of the kind of costume she deemed suitable to the occasion when drowning.