“Such callous sardness! Dragged my hair out by the roots! Is that the way you treat your visitors, my dear young friends?” she stuttered; but her dear young friends had no sympathy for her woes, and crowded round her, breathless with indignation.
“Wretched, miserable girl, so it was you all the time! What made you do it?”
“Wanted to amuse you on a wet day, and couldn’t think of anything better. Did I do it well?”
“Abominably well! I could never have believed we should have been so deceived. How you managed to disguise your voice I can’t think, and to make yourself look so awful. You are as white as a clown; and your teeth, Nan! What has become of your teeth?”
“Covered them with black sticking-plaster, that’s all. Not even for your benefit, my dears, could I extract my two front molars. I smeared my face with cold cream, and then rubbed in flour. Sticky, but efficacious, and sucked a chocolate all the time, to make my voice thick. I’ll swallow it now.” Nan gulped, and rolled her eyes in expressive enjoyment. “When I was dressed, I stole downstairs, let myself out of the side gate, and rang at the bell as bold as brass. Mary did not recognise me, so I felt I was safe; but my one terror was lest you should go upstairs to call me down.”
“And you found all the clothes in the dressing-up box! It is so long since we used it that I had almost forgotten the dear old things. The shawl and skirt I recognise, of course, but you have trimmed the bonnet yourself. I will say for you, my dear, that you made the most appalling old woman I have ever encountered.”
“But I don’t quite approve of making fun of anything so very, very sad as those dear incurables!” said Lilias solemnly. “Well, perhaps you didn’t make fun of them exactly, but it was not quite a nice subject to choose for a practical joke. We ought to think of them tenderly.—By the by, I want that half-crown, Nan. Give it back to me!”
“N–ay!” drawled Nan, shaking her head, and speaking in broad, North-country dialect, “N–ay, lass! I’ll none give it oop. It mun bide with me till I dee! I’ll give you back good coin of the realm instead, but this precious piece is mine, and shall be pierced with a hole, and chained to my side, to commemorate the occasion. It will be good for you as well as for me. You can look at it, and remember how generous you were!”
“Humph!” said Lilias, and turned to the tea-table to pour out the long-delayed tea. It was too strong to drink; and when Mary appeared in response to the bell, it was a treat to see her stagger back at the sight of the dishevelled figure in the arm-chair, and to watch the smile of benign condescension with which Nan wrinkled up her face and inclined her red-brown head.
Mary was an old friend of the family, and on sufficiently intimate terms to express her opinion in terms unchequered by forms of politeness. She wished to be informed what Miss Nan would be up to next, and repeated with unction her own description of the “Hugliest old woman you ever set eyes on,” as given to cook in the kitchen, ten minutes earlier. “We’ve been talking about you ever since, and wondering what you were after.”