“Oh! but you haven’t half heard,” said Di, greatly crestfallen; “it’s most exciting, I’m not supposed to know anything about it, but just by accident, I happened to hear—”
“Oh! isn’t that like a girl?” broke in Phil, “just to listen by acci—”
“Not like all girls,” put in Phoena, indignantly, “I’ve never listened by accident, and I’m sure Fay never has, have you, Fay?”
“Well, if it were an accident, Di couldn’t help it,” said Faith; “but it is horridly mean to repeat what you weren’t meant to hear. And I think considering how good and kind dear old Mrs. Busson is to all of us, it would be very ungrateful and horrid of us to go and pry into anything that she doesn’t want us to know.”
“Rather!” cried Phoena and her brothers in one breath. Andrew said nothing.
“I see you don’t understand,” faltered Di, on the verge of tears, “if you’d chosen to hear me out you would have seen that I hadn’t done anything mean or underhand either. However, I shan’t tell you any more,” she added, “though I could tell you the most extraordinary things, things that would sound more like fairy tales than—”
“Well, chain up now, for here are the infants coming back,” said Jack, “and the next time you do any eaves-dropping, don’t come and tell us about it, Madam Di, do you see?” and Jack tickled the end of his cousin’s nose with a long bracken frond, but very gently, for Jack was never rude to girls.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you, Faith,” said Di, ignoring Jack’s last remark. “Libbie tells me that horrid old Nannie is going to pay us a visit. I am sure I don’t want to see her, do you, Andrew?”
“Oh! of course she’s only coming to see you girls,” said Andrew.
“Who’s Nanny?” asked Jack.