Mrs. Gresley certainly had the gift of prophecy as far as the Pratts were concerned. Mrs. Pratt duly took the expected "fancy" to Rachel, and pressed her to stay at "The Towers" while she was in the neighborhood, and make further acquaintance with her "young ladies."
"Ada is very pernickety," she said, smiling towards that individual conversing with Dick. "She won't make friends with everybody, and she gives it me" (with maternal pride) "when I ask people to stay whom she does not take to. She says there's a very poor lot round here, and most of the young ladies so ill-bred and empty she does not care to make friends with them. I don't know where she gets all her knowledge from. I'm sure it's not from her mother. Ada, now you come and talk a little to Miss West."
Ada rose with the air of one who confers a favor, and Rachel made room for her on the sofa, while Mrs. Pratt squeezed herself behind the tea-table with Mrs. Gresley.
The conversation turned on bicycling.
"I bike now and then in the country," said Ada, "but I have not done much lately. We have only just come down from town, and, of course, I never bike in London."
Rachel had just said that she did.
"Perhaps you are nervous about the traffic," said Rachel.
"Oh! I'm not the least afraid of the traffic, but it's such bad form to bike in London."
"That, of course, depends on how it's done," said Rachel; "but I am sure in your ease you need not be afraid."
Ada glared at Rachel, and did not answer.