“YOU are really, without exception, the worst-behaved children I have ever heard of in my life. I cannot think of any punishment severe enough for what you deserve.”
Grandma spoke in a tone of awful sternness, and her expression was, if possible, even sterner than her voice. The four little culprits stood before her in a row, and trembled, but nobody could think of anything to say. It was half-past three, and the children had reached home five minutes earlier, and been sent straight up to Grandma’s room by Mary, in obedience to the orders she had received. It was Mary who had met the party at the station, and on the way home had told them of the excitement and consternation their disappearance had caused.
“I never saw the old lady so upset before,” she declared. “She most took Bridget’s and my head off, and goodness knows we hadn’t anything to do with it. She read that letter you left on the bureau, and she thought we’d told you the news about the stepmother, that was to be kept a secret till your pa came home. She telegraphed to Miss Kate to come home, and she was ’most wild with fright about you, till that lady’s message came.”
It was all very dreadful, and yet there was a certain thrill in the knowledge that Grandma had really been worried about them.
“I didn’t think she’d care much what became of us,” Dulcie had whispered to Daisy, and Daisy had answered, with her usual cheerfulness:
“It’s rather nice to know she does care just a little bit, after all.”
And now they were facing Grandma’s wrath, and awaiting the punishment which they felt sure was to follow.
“I cannot conceive how such an absurd idea ever entered any of your heads,” Mrs. Winslow went on, eyeing them over her spectacles. “For children in your position even to contemplate such a plan is outrageous. A Winslow taking a situation like an Irish servant girl. It is horrible!” And the aristocratic old lady actually shuddered.
Dulcie hung her head; her cheeks were crimson.
“It was all my fault,” she said, humbly; “I thought of it first, and the others didn’t want to do it at all.”