“You need not be in any hurry,” replied the other, with a pleasant smile, that yet seemed to have a touch of superiority in its deeper knowledge of Edward’s habits. “Mr. Tancred always pays us a good long visit on Sunday afternoon; but if you had rather go back to the hall——”
Bonnybell’s hesitation was of but two seconds’ duration. Barnacre and Hegelianism, or Flora and Sir Algy? If these were her only two alternatives, unpleasant as was the first, it was undoubtedly the least objectionable of the two.
“I am very happy here,” she said with soft civility, “if I am not in the way.”
She glanced appealingly across at the pigtailed Meg, in whom she seemed to divine less of neck-and-crop absorption in the utterances of the governess and more of covertly admiring interest in herself than was the case with the elder sister.
“May I help you to look at your picture-paper?” she asked, and took the acceptance of her appeal for granted, crossing the room to the side of the young girl, who was shyly holding the leaves of the journal in question, so as to be able to peep over its sheets at the startling stranger. The shyness in this case was not of the brutal, chair-oversetting, bolting character of the brother, and was compatible with honoured gratification, as was evidenced by the room readily made, and the paper hospitably spread open.
Miss Ransome’s first need was to suppress the expression of contempt which sprang to eyes and lips at the mawkish character of the publication; but to a really well-trained mind even Our Girlies can be made to provide nutritious pabulum. The portrait of a lady, surrounded by prize-taking Schipperke dogs, was the text provided on this occasion for Bonnybell’s instructive discourse.
“Lady Cressida Beaulieu!” she read, then added elucidatingly, “She used to go to the same coiffeur in Paris as we. She has thirty wigs; and he told us that hardly a week passed without one of them coming over from London to be refrisèd, or done something to.”
“Thirty! What an expense!” ejaculated Meg, in thrifty horror.
Bonnybell laughed, her little bubbling, innocent laugh, that often swore so piquantly with the themes that called it forth.
“It would be if she paid for them.”