Cherry laughed out in mockery. “Dear me! old maids do deceive themselves so!”
Very hard, that, and Juliet winced. She was five or six years older than the fairy. How Fred relished the bringing home to him of his sins, I leave you to judge.
“I say, can’t you have done with this, you silly girls?” he cried out meekly.
“In a short time you’ll have our wedding-cards,” went on Cherry. “It’s all arranged. He’s only waiting for me to decide whether it shall take place here or at Gretna Green.”
Juliet dashed round to face Fred Scott. “If this be true; if you do behave in this false way to me, I’ll not survive it,” she said, hardly able to bring the words out in her storm of passion. “Do you hear me? I’ll not live to see it, I say; and my ghost shall haunt her for her whole life after.”
“Come now, easy, Juliet,” pleaded Fred uncomfortably. “It’s all nonsense, you know.”
“I think it is; I think she is saying this to aggravate me,” assented Juliet, subsiding to a sort of calmness. “If not, take you warning, Cherry Dawson, for I’ll keep my word. My apparition shall haunt you for ever and ever.”
“It had better begin to-night, then, for you’ll soon find out that it’s as true as gospel,” retorted Cherry.
Managing at last to get in a word, I delivered Mrs. Cramp’s message: they were to come in instantly. Fred obeyed it with immense relief and ran in before me. The two girls would follow, I concluded, when their jarring had spent itself. The last glimpse I had of them, they were stretching out their faces at each other like a couple of storks. Juliet’s straw hat had fallen from her head and was hanging by its strings round her neck.
“Oh, they’re coming,” spoke up Fred, in answer to Mrs. Cramp. “It’s very nice out there; the moon’s bright as day.”