“Aunt Margaret,” repeated Leila, opening her eyes very wide. “But it’s not fixed about her coming, is it?”
Then Mrs Fortescue’s patience began to give way.
“Leila, you are too bad,” she exclaimed. “What have you been thinking of all this time? You heard your father talking of going to the station? You yourself asked if you could have some of the flowers? You must have understood that Aunt Margaret is coming to-day—this afternoon.”
Leila looked rather foolish.
“To-day,” she repeated lamely. “I—well, yes, I remember about the flowers, but I thought they were being sent up from Fareham as usual.”
Perhaps for peace’ sake it was as well that just then Harriet came in to clear the breakfast-table, and Mrs Fortescue hurried off to her morning interview with Susan in the kitchen, leaving Leila still staring out of the window. But the clatter and bustle of Harriet’s rather clumsy movements fidgeted her. She turned to the door and made her way slowly into the drawing-room.
“I may as well get my book,” she said to herself, though I hope that in her heart there was some faint intention of fulfilling the task her mother had spoken of. Arrived in the drawing-room, she stood still and looked round her.
“So this, the only decent room in the house, is to be given up to Aunt Margaret,” she thought, “and we’re to be her servants! Well—it’s all of a piece: but Chrissie won’t stand it, and it will all fall upon me, no doubt, like everything else disagreeable. Yes I would far, far rather be a governess, or even what they call a pupil-teacher, in a school, than be treated like a servant in my own home. If only I were a little older.”
Then her eyes fell on her book. She took it up and sat down, fingering the pages.
“I can’t dust without a towel or a cloth or whatever they call it, and I don’t know where to get one. I may as well read till Chrissie comes down,” and in two moments she was lost to everything outside her story.