“But you cannot explore all by yourself,” said Mr Morion, “and I don’t suppose Horace will be always at your command.”
A very slight twinkle of amusement might have been discerned in Madeleine’s eyes by a close observer. She guessed that almost in spite of himself Mr Morion was leading back again to the rather delicate subject of his ignored relations, which seemed to have a kind of fascination for him. And she was not unwilling to play into his hands.
“Perhaps,” she replied, “once I have made acquaintance with them, your cousins may be good enough to accompany me in my rambles. Doubtless they know their own neighbourhood well.”
“Mr Morion’s cousins?” said her mother, before he had time to say anything. “Whom are you talking about, Madeleine? Oh, yes, I remember; Horace said something about a family of your own name, I think,” turning to her visitor, “who are living up near there. But they are scarcely within countable relationship, are they?”
“I’m afraid I have got into the way of thinking of them as not so, or rather of not thinking of them at all,” he replied. “But Madeleine has been obliging enough to remind me, at least tacitly so, that blood is thicker than water. Horace, too, has discovered that these cousins of mine, many times removed, are very poor, so on the whole I am beginning to feel rather guilty.”
Mrs Littlewood turned to her daughter with something in her manner which to Madeleine revealed a sense of annoyance, though her tone and words were gentle.
“My dear child,” she said, ignoring the latter part of Mr Morion’s speech, “you should be getting old enough by this time to realise that few of us have a mission for correcting other people. In very early youth such ideas are more excusable.”
Madeleine’s rather pale face flushed all over. She looked reproachfully at their guest.
“Mr Morion,” she exclaimed, “I really don’t think you are—” and then she stopped.
“Mamma,” with considerable appeal in her tone, “truly I don’t think that I was so impertinent as—as it sounds.”