'I can come now, auntie,' she said. 'I've had quite enough tea.' But this Mrs. Caryll would not allow.
'I can wait five or ten minutes longer,' she said, looking at her watch. 'Perhaps Miss Ward can spare me a cup of tea.'
Miss Ward was delighted to do so, and Archie was on his feet in an instant, ringing the bell and then running out into the passage to save time by meeting the servant and asking for another cup and saucer.
'And have you had a pleasant afternoon?' said Aunt Mattie, when she was seated at the table. 'Have you no adventures to tell me about, Jus? or you, Pat?'
She looked at the two boys a little curiously, for she had noticed that they were silent and rather gloomy.
'It was all right,' said Justin in his somewhat surly way. 'We didn't keep together all the time. I don't know what the others were doing.'
'Oh! it was lovely,' exclaimed Rosamond, 'Pat and Archie and I were——'
'Miss Mouse does so like the moor,' interrupted Pat, 'though there wasn't any sunset to speak of this evening.'
And again Rosamond felt a warning touch on her foot as Pat went on talking rather eagerly about the sunsets that were sometimes to be seen, which interested his aunt, and turned the conversation from what the children had been about that special afternoon.
The little girl felt uneasy and perplexed. Were the boys afraid of her 'tale-telling,' as they called it? And even if she had told everything that had happened that afternoon, what harm would it have done, or who could have found fault with it? Nothing could have been prettier or nicer than Nance's story, and Rosamond felt sure that she was a good old woman. She had been so afraid of their doing anything that Mr. and Mrs. Hervey might not like too, and her whole manner showed how much respect she felt for the boys' parents.