For their aunt’s sake, Mrs Fortescue tried to speak lightly, though she was really feeling sadly discouraged. Chrissie tried to toss her head in the way she usually did when found fault with, but I scarcely think the effort was a success, and she was very glad that as her father was late that morning, having had letters to write in his study, she had finished her breakfast before he came in.
“Yes,” said her mother, in answer to her unspoken question, “yes, you can go upstairs at once and make yourself fit to be seen.”
“Leila,” said Mrs Fortescue in a moment or two, “I do think you might take a little charge of Chrissie. After all she is younger and more thoughtless by nature than you are. Did you not see how untidy she was?”
“How could I?” said Leila gloomily. “She had left the room before I awoke.”
Just then Mr Fortescue’s step was heard in the passage, and as Leila’s black looks were almost as much to be dreaded as Chrissie’s dirty face, their mother added quickly, “Well, at any rate, you can help her now. So run after her;” and Leila, though with evident unwillingness, did as she was told.
“I am so sorry, so terribly sorry,” Mrs Fortescue had time to say to her aunt in a low voice, “that you should have such an uncomfortable first morning with us;” but Aunt Margaret only smiled quietly.
“My dear,” she said, “I am here, I hope, to be of some little help to you, not only to be comfortable, though really there is nothing that matters as far as I am concerned. And don’t lose heart. The little girls will profit by all this in the end.”
An hour or so later, when Aunt Margaret, up in her own room, was still busy unpacking, there came a tap at the door, and in answer to her “come in,” a small voice replied—
“It’s me, Auntie. Mumsey said p’raps I could carry things downstairs, or rerange them for you.”
“Thank you, my dear little boy. Yes—here in this corner are some books and my knitting and some of my pet treasures that I should like to have in the drawing-room. Mumsey showed me the nice table she has kept for me.”