'Only that you made fuss enough about our own unpacking,' he replied, 'quite extra from the getting the Hut in order and all that.'
'You are very unfair, and unkind,' I said, feeling as if I should like to cry, for I thought I had been very patient and good-tempered. 'Mamma, don't you think he needn't have said that?'
'He did not want to say it, to give him his due,' said mamma, smiling a little; 'and to give Ida her due,' she went on, turning to Geordie, 'I don't see, my boy, that you needed to think it.'
'Well,' said Dods, and I felt my vexedness begin to go away, 'after all, I don't know that I did. I suppose we've all been rather fussy, though it wasn't in a bad sort of way.'
'No, indeed,' said mamma; 'it was in a very good sort of way. You have all been most helpful; I wish you could have seen my last letter to papa about you.'
After that it would have been impossible to go on being vexed with any one, wouldn't it? I never knew any one like mamma for making horrid feelings go and nice ones come, and yet she is always quite true.
'Then, do you mean that you want me to go with you when you call on the Trevors, mamma?' I asked.
'Yes, I do, rather particularly,' she replied, so of course I said I would be ready whatever time she fixed, though I didn't very much want to go. I was just at the age—I don't think I have quite grown past it even now—when girls hate paying calls, and I could not bear the idea of being received as visitors in our very own house. This was extremely silly of course, as it was such a lucky thing for us to have let it to good, careful people like the Trevors, but I don't think it was an unnatural feeling. And afterwards, poor mamma owned to me that it was something of the same kind that had made her wish to take me with her. It would make her feel less 'lonely,' she thought. Wasn't it sweet of her to think that?
So that afternoon, or the next, I forget which, we found ourselves walking slowly up through the woods to the big house. I felt rather as if it must be Sunday, for it was not often, except on Sundays, that I was in the woods in very neat 'get up,'—proper gloves instead of rough garden ones, and best boots, and hat, and everything like for going to church, or for going a drive with mamma in the victoria.
We did not expect—at least I did not—to find our new acquaintances very interesting. There was nobody young among them, and hearing that they had come to Eastercove principally for health's sake did not sound very lively.