"Well, Miss Margaret, your mamma was good enough to say I might come whenever it was most convenient to me: and that's early morning, or late evening, so as not to take me out of my work in the daytime. I thought I might just catch you and Miss St. Clare when you were dressing, and could have tried on my bodies without much trouble to you."
"What bodies are they?" asked Margaret. "I did not know that anything was being made."
"They are dresses for travelling, miss. Mrs. St. Clare gave me a pattern of the material she would like, and I have been getting them.
"Oh, for travelling," repeated Margaret, whose mind, what with one thing and another, was in a perfect whirl. "Will you like to go back, and try mine on now."
But the dressmaker declined to turn back. She was nearer Trennach now than she was to The Mount, and her apprentice had no work to go on with until she arrived at home to set it for her. Appointing the following morning, she continued her way.
Daisy continued hers. It was a most unlucky thing that the dressmaker should have gone to The Mount that morning of all others! What a fuss there would be! And what excuse could she make for her absence from home? There was only one, as it seemed to Daisy, that she could make—she had been out for a walk.
But the shifting clouds had now gathered in a dense mass overhead, and the rain came pouring down. Daisy had brought no umbrella: nothing but a fashionable parasol about, large enough for a doll: one cannot be expected on such an occasion to be as provident as the renowned Mrs. McStinger. The wind took Daisy's cloak, as before; the drifting rain-storm half blinded her. Before she reached home, her pretty muslin dress, and her dainty parasol, and herself also, were wet through.
"Now where have you been?" demanded Mrs. St. Clare, pouncing upon Daisy in the hall, and backed by Tabitha; whilst Lydia, who had that morning risen betimes, thanks to the exacting dressmaker, looked on from the door of the breakfast-room.
"I went for a walk," gasped Daisy, fully believing all was about to be discovered. "The rain overtook me."
"What a pickle you are in," commented Lydia.