'Yes, Miss Frances, his tea and an egg. He was very pleased. Master Eugene does enjoy a nice boiled fresh egg. I think you'll have to go down to late tea, though, Miss Frances; perhaps Miss Mildmay wouldn't be pleased if you didn't; and perhaps'——
'Nonsense, Phebe,' said her young mistress; 'Aunt Alison doesn't care. You speak as if she was like a mamma, wanting to have us beside her always. She's had Miss Jacinth all the afternoon, and she likes her better than me. I'm sure she wouldn't care if she never saw me again. Well, no; perhaps I shouldn't say that, for she's quite kind. She was very kind about letting me go this afternoon, and sending you to take me and to fetch me, Phebe.'
'Yes, Miss Frances,' began Phebe, again with some hesitation, 'it was just that I was thinking about. If you go down to tea just as usual, nice and neat, it'll make it more likely that she will let you go again. It will show that a little change now and then will do you no harm, nor get you out of regular ways, so to say, Miss Frances.'
'Very well,' the child agreed; 'I don't care much one way or another. Oh Phebe,' she went on, brightening up again—it would have been difficult to depress Francie for long—'we had such fun this afternoon;' and she went into some particulars of the games, which Phebe listened to with great interest. 'I wish Aunt Alison would sometimes let us have friends to play with us. We could have beautiful "I spy" in the garden.'
'Yes, Miss Frances, so you could,' agreed Phebe.
'You see at Stannesley there were really no children, no girls any way near our age except the Vicar's daughter, and though she came to have tea with us sometimes it wasn't much pleasure—not fun, at least. She's a little older than Miss Jacinth, and oh, Phebe, she's so awfully deaf. It's almost like not hearing at all.'
'Poor young lady!' said Phebe, sympathisingly.
'Yes, isn't it sad? And so, you see, the one thing we were glad of about coming here—I was, any way—was about going to school; just what some girls wouldn't have liked. I've always wanted so to have some companions, only it isn't half as much good having them if you only see them at lessons. I don't think Miss Jacinth minds. She was pleased to go to school because of learning better and finding out how much other girls know compared with us, but I don't think she minds the way I do.'
She had almost forgotten whom she was speaking to, or indeed that she was speaking aloud, and half started when Phebe replied again to this long speech.
'It's just because of that, Miss Frances,' said the girl, 'that I was thinking how nice it will be if you're invited sometimes to play with the young ladies of a holiday afternoon like to-day. And if I were you, I'd take care to show Miss Mildmay that it doesn't unsettle you, and I'd just put out of my mind about having any young ladies to come to you. It'd not suit your aunt's ways.'