Bonnybell was silent. (At all events, I will not make it easier for her.)
“Tom has written to say that he will be back on Tuesday.”
Miss Ransome’s was, after all, a brave spirit. There was an interval of scarcely five seconds before she was answering playfully, in quite a gallant voice—
“And he naturally wishes his house to be cleared of rubbish before his return.”
The confusion on Felicity’s face deepened. As an actress she had neither facility nor distinction.
“You have always an amusing way of putting things, but of course you do not mean it! You know as well as I do that Tom is the last person in the world to think anybody ‘rubbish;’ and he is the soul of hospitality, but—he has been away a long time, and perhaps—at first—he would expect to have me to himself!”
Bonnybell made a little gesture of assent. She would be able to speak in a moment or two. One thought of pious thankfulness meanwhile darted across her dismay. Thank Heaven! she had not paid any of her bills, and Camilla’s tips lay intact in her despatch-box.
“What day would you like me to go?” she asked presently, with a mild but purposed baldness, in pursuance of her intention of not, as she would have phrased it, letting Felicity down easily. “Perhaps, by working very hard, I might get the bazaar lists finished by to-morrow.”
Under the apparent generosity of the sentence there lurked a little snake of pardonable malice. Miss Ransome was well aware that the function alluded to, “The Fancy Fair for All England Cataleptics,” to be held under Distinguished Patronage in the Albert Hall in mid-May, one of the Vice-Presidencies of which had been accepted by Lady Bletchley before her new honours, with all their attendant labours, had fallen upon her, was rapidly developing into an incubus and a nightmare. Bonnybell was also aware that the loss of her own aid would be an irreparable one; but there was perhaps more subtlety than kindliness in reminding her patroness of the fact at the moment. The success was all she could have wished.
“What day I wish you to go? You can have very little idea what you have been to me to put such a question.”