Mrs Mildmay looked a little agitated.
'Francie, dear,' she said, 'I haven't time to tell you about it just now. We must hurry down to tea. But I have done something, and I almost hope I have made a beginning towards more. All I can, all it would be right for me to tell you, I will. But I scarcely think I can do so to-day. Come to my room quite early to-morrow morning, half an hour or so before breakfast. As soon as we have had tea just now, I have promised to help—at least she puts it so—Lady Myrtle to write a rather difficult letter.'
'Is it to the Harpers?' half whispered Frances.
Her mother nodded.
Frances gave a sort of skip of joy.
'Oh, mamma, how lovely!' she exclaimed. 'How clever you are! I do believe everything's going to come right.'
'Don't be too hopeful, dear. But at least their present terrible difficulties will be a little smoothed, I trust.
And it was no use telling Frances not to be too hopeful. She seemed almost to dance as she followed her mother down-stairs, and the drawing-room at Robin Redbreast had rarely, if ever, heard brighter talk and merrier laughter than went on this afternoon round the tea-table, where Jacinth did the honours as if she were the recognised daughter of the house.
It went perhaps somewhat against the grain with her to be told, though in the kindest manner, that Lady Myrtle and Mrs Mildmay had some business letters to write in the boudoir, and must not be disturbed till post-time. But she was a sensible girl on the whole, and really glad to see the cordial understanding between her mother and the friend who seemed to her now by adoption almost a second mother. And she was without the slightest suspicion that the letters in question concerned the Harpers, of whom indeed for some time past she had almost left off thinking at all.
'Possibly it's already something about the London appointment for papa,' she thought. 'Lady Myrtle is always so energetic and business-like. I daresay she would have liked to consult me about it, but then it would scarcely have seemed right not to make mamma the first of course.'