“In course I didn’t. She’d kept me waitin’,” agreed Jasper, whose feelings had been evidently slightly ruffled. “I was only shakin’ hands—goin’ to, I mean. Still,” he added, with his usual kindliness, “it was polite of her to say ‘sir’ to me.”
By this time they were close to their own house. Arrived there, the little girls ran upstairs as quickly as possible. As quickly as possible, too, did they take off their hats and jackets, though in spite of Chrissie’s new resolutions I fear I must own that her jacket, if not hat, found its resting-place on the floor, and as to what became of boots and gloves I really could not say!
For on their way past the dining-room, the door of which had been purposely left slightly open, they had heard their mother’s voice begging them to come down at once. “Tea is ready. Your aunt and I are waiting for you,” she said.
To be quickly obedient, I am sorry to say, was not the motive that inspired their haste.
“Now’s our time, Lell,” said Chrissie. “There’s no one in the drawing-room. We can put it back at once on Auntie’s table. I’ll just slip it a little under some of the other things, so if she possibly has missed it, she’ll think afterwards she had made a mistake.”
“Do it yourself,” said Leila, and then it was that she added her warning as to what she would think of Chrissie if she ever “told,” to which no reply was vouchsafed.
And the prayer-book was replaced, and when the little sisters made their appearance, with, as I have said, unusual quickness, in the dining-room, their mother greeted them with her brightest smiles.
“I really think,” she was saying to herself, “that things are beginning to improve wonderfully with them.”
But Aunt Margaret, though always ready to hope and believe the best, felt less sanguine. There was a certain flurry and excitement about Chrissie, a half-veiled uneasiness about Leila, a sort of reluctance in both to look one frankly in the face, which made her anxious, though she could have given no real reason for this.
And Jasper was very silent, and for once the cheerful and ever-ready little fellow seemed absent and self-absorbed.