“You are not coming with us?” the girl had said with an extremely engaging moue of regret. “But I suppose that you do not feel up to it.”
“Up to what?”
“To the long morning service.”
“The long morning service lasts exactly one hour and ten minutes, and it is not because of its length that I do not attend it, but because I am not a member of the Church of England.”
“Oh!”—a little nonplussed by a momentary inability to think of a suitable comment; then, with a quick recovery, “Of course! So many of the oldest families are Catholics.”
“I am not a Roman Catholic either; but if you wait for me to expound my creed you will be late for church, and—I do not think that your hat is quite straight.” The words were snubby, but the speaker relaxed into an unintentional smile as she evoked them.
Of course, there was not the slightest foundation in fact for Bonnybell’s expressed regret, but there was a certain pleasantness in even the fiction, in even the false presentment and elusive shadow of a young thing belonging to one, and concerning itself about one’s comings and goings.
As to Miss Ransome, she skipped off, relieved, and with a humorous inward indignation at Camilla for not having perceived that her toque’s racy obliquity was intentional.
She found her escort waiting for her under the stone portico over the hall door, and casting a rather questioning eye up to a sky that did not answer very reassuringly.
“Have you an umbrella?” he asked.