“If you had heard what she said to me, you would suppose her still in the nursery, even,” replied his grandmother.
“Then,” Philip remarked, “I think I will defer for the present my introduction to your sister, Madelene.”
“Just as you please,” Miss St Quentin replied indifferently.
But as they got out of the carriage, “I did not know,” she whispered, “that you could be so naughty, Aunt Anna.”
Chapter Seven.
An Invitation.
The summer was gone; autumn itself was almost giving place to winter. Ella St Quentin looked out of the window one morning as she finished dressing, and shivered as she saw the grass all silvered over, faintly gleaming in the cold thin sunshine.
“How freezing it seems!” she said to herself. “I hate winter, especially in the country. I wish—if it weren’t for that old wretch I really think I would write to auntie and ask her to invite me for a week or two’s visit. It can’t be so cold, and certainly not so dull, at Bath as here. I do think I deserve a little fun—if it were even the chance of some shopping—after these last three or four months. To think how I’ve practised and bored at French and German—not that I dislike my lessons after all,” and she smiled a little at the consciousness that had she done so it would indeed have been a case of “twenty not making him drink.”