“Oh, well,” said her aunt, “don’t excite yourself about it. I am glad to see you have sense of your own—indeed, I always say you have if you would only think a little. But you must learn to be less impulsive—you know how entirely I forbid your making any friendships or intimacies among those girls. What are they like—pretty fair on the whole?”
“They were all very kind,” began Claudia.
“Kind, child! Don’t use such stupid words. Of course they will be all only too civil. That’s not the question. What sort of girls do they seem?”
“Some seem very nice indeed,” replied Miss Meredon. “The nicest looking of all, indeed she is rather a peculiarly pretty girl—I never saw any one quite like her, except—no, I don’t remember who it can be she reminds me of. She has quite dark brown hair, and a rather brown complexion, prettily brown, you know, and yet bright blue eyes. Her name is Charlotte Waldron.”
“Humph!” said Lady Mildred, “like her father.” She was not fond of Mr Waldron’s very “Osbert” characteristics, though she scarcely allowed even to herself that he had any traceable connection with the Silverthorns’ family.
“Oh, do you know them?” exclaimed Claudia, joyfully. “I felt sure when I saw her that you could not object—”
“Nonsense, Claudia,” Lady Mildred interrupted. “Her father is the Wortherham lawyer, or a Wortherham lawyer; no doubt there are plenty of them. And I should rather more object, if possible, to your making friends with this girl than with any others of the Wortherham misses. Mr Waldron has some little of the Silverthorns business, and I won’t have any gossiping about my affairs. You know the understanding on which you came to me?”
“Of course I do, dear aunt,” Claudia replied. “I wish you would not think because I say out to you whatever I feel that I have any idea of going against your wishes. I only meant that this girl looked so—it sounds rather vulgar to express it so, but it is the only way to say it—she looks so completely a lady that I thought you would probably not mind my knowing her a little better than the others. I fancy we shall be together in most of our lessons.”
“So much the worse,” thought Lady Mildred. “It is really very unlucky. I had no idea that Edward Waldron had a daughter old enough to be at school.”
But aloud, after a moment’s silence, she remarked with a slight touch of sarcasm in her tone,—