“Where’s Mamma?” she inquired, with a yawn, as she took her place at the table.
“She has a headache,” Gretel explained; “Annie took her some coffee and toast on a tray.”
Ada looked more interested.
“Something’s up,” she remarked, helping herself to an orange. “Do you know what it is, Gretel?”
“No,” said Gretel, looking very much surprised; “she didn’t say there was anything the matter last night. Oh, Ada, I had such a perfectly beautiful time. Percy came for me to go for a motor-ride with him. He says I must call him Percy, though I don’t think it sounds quite polite, when he’s so much older than I am. We had a wonderful ride, and then we went to Sherry’s and—”
“I felt sure there was something wrong when I came home last night,” Ada went on, without paying the slightest attention to Gretel’s news. “Mamma was in her room, and wouldn’t open the door when I spoke to her. I thought her voice sounded queer, and she seemed very cross. I do hope it isn’t any more bother about money; we’re poor enough already, goodness knows. I’ll go in and get it out of her, whatever it is, as soon as I’ve finished my breakfast.”
As Ada had not proved a sympathetic listener, Gretel refrained from any further information about her own affairs, and in a few minutes she went away to make her bed, leaving Miss Marsh to finish her breakfast alone.
Bed-making is not an easy task for a girl of eleven, especially when there is a heavy mattress, which one has had strict injunctions to turn every morning. Gretel had only this duty to perform since the arrival of Annie, who had pronounced the work much too hard, and insisted on having help. But Gretel was an orderly little soul, who rather enjoyed housework, and when she made her own bed she had at least the satisfaction of getting her room in order in the morning, instead of waiting till afternoon, which had sometimes been the case during Dora’s reign. She had just finished her dusting when her door—which she had closed—was flung suddenly open, and Ada, looking both flushed and excited, appeared on the threshold.
“Well, you’ve done it!” remarked that young lady in a tone of such exasperation, that innocent Gretel regarded her in amazement.
“Done what?” she inquired, stupidly.