“What are you talking about, Japs?” she said pertly. “Flowers—in the middle of winter, even if there was a garden, which there isn’t. What does he want them for, Mums?”
Her mother looked at her in silence for a moment. She had stood up and was holding Jasper’s hand tightly in her own, almost as if the touch of it strengthened and cheered her. Then she said quietly—
“You cannot have forgotten surely, or if you have you should not have done so, that Aunt Margaret is expected to-day, and naturally we want to make her coming to us—the only home she has now—as bright and happy as possible.” Christabel tossed her head. “I was going to say, Japs dear,” she added to the child, “that very likely there will be some flowers from the Fareham conservatories. The last we can have! But it will be nice if there are.”
“Mayn’t we have some in our room?” asked Leila suddenly. The word “flowers coming” had caught her ears, though she had heard nothing else.
“I cannot say till I see what there are,” replied Mrs Fortescue, and Leila relapsed into silence, and turning to the window, stood gazing out at the rainswept street.
“Even a few flowers grudged me,” she thought. “I wish I hadn’t asked for them,” and indeed the doing so had been an impulse not at all of a piece with her attitude of “suffering saint.”
“Chrissie,” Mrs Fortescue began again, “did you look at yourself in the glass before you came down? you had better do so now. You are inexcusably untidy.”
“Am I?” said Christabel airily. “Well, yes, my collar’s crooked, I feel.” She gave a tug to it, but in the wrong direction, which did not improve matters. “It was all.”
“You’re not to say I had anything to do with it, or you, this morning,” snapped out Leila.
“Hush,” said their mother. “Go upstairs, Christabel, and dress yourself properly, and above all, wash your face and hands carefully.”