“Dicky,” said Evangeline, a few days later, when she and Teresa had settled themselves under the cliff after breakfast, “I have done the most evil bit of mischief. I feel like Guy Fawkes. I have advised Mrs. Trotter to come here, and she is coming.”
“But why not?” Teresa asked in surprise.
“Don’t you know how Evan hates her? No, I suppose you wouldn’t. But he does. She is his bête noir.”
“But, then, why have you asked her?”
“I didn’t ask her. Mother wrote and said the rooms the Trotters generally go to at Broadstairs have got something the matter with them; a lodger developed some disease or other, I think. They couldn’t get in anywhere, and she wanted to know if I could get rooms here. There are rooms in those cottages down on the left by the church, nurse told me. So I think she is sure to come.”
“But that isn’t your fault,” said Teresa. “You couldn’t do anything else. Evan hasn’t bought up the whole place.”
“No, not if I had done it innocently like that,” said Evangeline, “but I didn’t. I urged her to come and made everything easy, and I have been enjoying the idea ever since. It is deliberate vice. There is Evan coming along now with Mrs. Vachell, of course. He still thinks her a very ladylike woman. Oh, Dicky! when Mrs. Trotter comes won’t she mow them both down with repartee? It will be lovely.”
“Chips,” said Teresa hesitatingly, “you—you’re not so—so kind to Evan as you are to the rest of us. You used to be so interested in making him talk, and now you so often won’t listen when he does.”
“He talks such rot,” said her sister. “I can’t be bothered with it.” There was silence for some minutes.
“I’m a pig, Dicky,” said Evangeline presently. “But if you knew how deadly it is being with someone who doesn’t understand the way women look at things——”