"And of course Derry knew there'd be a row too?"
"Yes."
I sighed. "Well, the row's over now. Better let the whole thing drop. Your father's perfectly right, and you were bound to get found out sooner or later."
She made no reply.
But she returned to her luckless plaint a moment later. She struck the upright of the pergola softly and vindictively with her hand.
"It was all that beastly bathe and Miss Oliphant's being late! We should have been all right if she'd been there at the proper time!"
"I'm afraid that was my fault, Jennie. I walked rather slowly, and Miss Oliphant waited for me."
"I know; of course it had nothing to do with you at all.... Then she goes and gets her things into knots, and I have to untie them, and that costume of hers is as bad as getting into a ball-dress instead of just a skin like nearly everybody else! Anyway the sea's there if she wants to bathe, and she can swim as well as I can if she does get into a current, and it isn't as if she needed a chaperone——"
"Jennie, my dear, be reasonable!" I begged her. "You can hardly blame Miss Oliphant for—for what your father was told."
"Oh, I'm not blaming her! But it makes you angry when stupid little accidents like those——" She swallowed.