CHAPTER XI
IT was the Thursday before Good Friday, and in the Tregennis household there was great excitement and joyous expectancy. Mrs. Tregennis had sung softly to herself all the while she was dressing, greatly to the annoyance of the Naval Officer’s wife, who was invariably irritated when people hummed. She was irritated, too, by Mrs. Tregennis’s happy manner when she carried in the downstairs sitting-room breakfast; and again when breakfast was over and was being cleared away.
Then, however, curiosity got the better of hurt dignity. “What time do the ladies come?” she asked.
“At ten minutes after six, ma’am.”
“Ah, then perhaps I had better defer my call until to-morrow. They will have many little matters to occupy them this evening.”
“How do you mean ‘call,’ Ma’am?” asked Mrs. Tregennis anxiously, feeling that there was probably trouble ahead.
“I mean that I shall, of course, visit them at once,” replied Annabel’s mother in her most affected manner. “If I approve of them, and find that they belong to my own social grade, I shall most certainly take them up and show them every civility.”
“I don’t think the young ladies will want to trouble about visitors and such,” retorted Mrs. Tregennis hotly. “They be all for bein’ out and sittin’ on the rocks, be our ladies, and they’ve got each other, an’ they don’t want nothin’ more. And they’m just of the very best, ma’am, our ladies; truly lovely people they be.”