Nan laughed happily.
“Then she did you good too? That’s all right. Girls, I’m hungry. This has been a most exhausting afternoon. I don’t think there is a chance of anyone else coming, so hadn’t we better go downstairs and eat up some of the good things ourselves? How do you feel?”
There was no doubt about the girls’ feelings. They might have been starving, from the alacrity with which they sprang from their seats, followed their hostess downstairs, and seated themselves at the dining-table.
“We will not wait any longer, Johnson. Bring in fresh tea and coffee, and then you can leave us. We will attend to ourselves,” said Nan to the solemn-faced butler; and, as soon as he had departed, “Isn’t it just wonderful how servants contrive to keep their faces straight?” she cried laughingly. “I’ve no doubt they are all laughing themselves ill downstairs at the collapse of my great ‘At Home,’ but Johnson looks as if it were the most correct thing in the world for three people to sit down to a table laid for a dozen! I’ll carve, and you can pour out. Now for the chicken and ham—now for the gay Sally Lunn! Eat, my darlings, eat! Do without dinner for one night, and save a friend’s reputation! I shall never hear the last of it from Gervase, unless I can tell him that some of the things were used.”
It was a merry meal, and lasted for an inordinately long time, and when it was over the three girls felt that their mutual acquaintance had progressed by giant strides.
Cynthia went home to give a graphic description of Betty’s charms, and to cry—
“You must, you really must, call upon Mrs Trevor, mother, for I can’t be happy till I know the whole family.”
Betty burst into the dining-room in a flutter of excitement, exclaiming all in a breath—
“She’s a darling, a perfect darling; and the Pet was there, and her name is Cynthia, and she’s not pampered a bit. We are awfully good friends; and what do you think?—only one governess turned up, and there are heaps and heaps of cakes left. And may Jill and Pam go to tea on Monday to eat them up?”
As for Nan, she laid her pretty head on her husband’s shoulder, and refused to be comforted.