THE DOOR IS UNLOCKED
A couple of days before Miss Crabingway was due to return Beryl made an opportunity to speak to Pamela about the money she had borrowed.
"I haven't got it on me at present, Pamela," said Beryl. "But I'll be sure to let you have it back. I'll send it to you by post, without fail. It was awfully good of you.... I have got your address, haven't I? Oh, yes, I wrote it down in my note book."
"That's all right. Don't worry about that—any time will do," said Pamela. "If I could help you in any way——"
But Beryl thanked her and assured her that everything was all right, and hurriedly changed the subject.
Miss Crabingway was expected home on the Friday morning, so the girls made all their final preparations on the Thursday evening, and Pamela and Beryl and Isobel (Caroline was busy packing) spent an hour after tea in picking flowers and arranging them in every room in the house.
"Why, it's like as if the garden 'as come inside the house," cried Martha, passing through the hall as Pamela was arranging a big bowl of roses on a small table by the front door.
"Aren't they lovely?" said Pamela, burying her nose in them. "And we don't seem to have robbed the garden a bit—there are heaps more.... I always think flowers give one such a welcome, don't you, Martha? ... And these are going to stand on the mat, as it were, and be the first to shake hands with Miss Crabingway to-morrow, to welcome her home."
But, after all, it was not the bowl of roses that welcomed Miss Crabingway home; it was a pot of shaggy yellow chrysanthemums that stood inside the french windows of the drawing-room that night. Pamela did not know this, though, until the following morning, after breakfast.
Pamela noticed, when she put her head inside the kitchen door on her way to breakfast that Martha and Ellen were whispering together in a subdued, excited way, and that they stopped at once on catching sight of her and went hastily on with their work.