Altogether the adventure—and a real adventure it was—gave them plenty to think of and to talk about all the way home and after they got there. Eugene forgot his fatigue, and chattered briskly about the goodness of the little brown cakes, till he got a snub from Jacinth about being so greedy. His appetite, however, did not seem to have suffered, and he was quite ready to do justice to the tea waiting for them at home, though not without some allusions to Lady Myrtle's delicious cakes, and wishes that Aunt Alison would sometimes give them 'a change from bread and butter.'
For one of Miss Mildmay's fixed ideas about children was that they could not be brought up too plainly.
'We do have a change sometimes,' said Jacinth. 'We always have golden syrup on Saturdays and jam on Sundays, and you know we've had buns two or three times on birthdays.'
'Other children have buns and cakes far oftener than us,' said Eugene. 'Like we used to at Stannesley.'
'It was quite different there,' said Jacinth; 'a big country-house and baking at home.'
'Everything was nice at Stannesley,' said Frances with a sigh. 'Granny and Uncle Marmy really loved us; that makes the difference.'
'Aunt Alison loves us in her way,' said Jacinth. 'Everybody can't be the same. I think you're getting into a very bad habit of grumbling, Frances. And this afternoon you really should be pleased. For I shouldn't at all wonder if Lady Myrtle often asks us to go to see her, and that would be a treat and a change. But what you say about poor granny and Uncle Marmy reminds me to say something. You really needn't fly up so on the defensive every time I name them; you did it again to-day, and I'm sure Lady Myrtle must have thought it very queer, just as if I'——
But this second reproof for her behaviour at Robin Redbreast did not find Frances as meek as the former one, which, in deference to Jacinth's superior knowledge on such subjects, she had felt she perhaps deserved.
'I will "fly up" as you call it,' she interrupted angrily, 'when you talk in that cold measured way about dear granny and Uncle Marmy, as if you were almost ashamed of them. For one thing I can't bear you to say "poor" granny; it's not right. She was a sort of a saint, and I'm quite sure that now she's'——But here Frances burst into tears.
Jacinth felt sorry, but annoyed and irritated also. She blamed herself for having begun any private talk of the kind before Eugene and Phebe; for, as sometimes happened when they had come in late, Phebe was having tea with them this evening. And she felt conscious also of deserving, to a certain extent, her sister's blame. But Jacinth had a good deal of self-control.