'I understand,' replies she caustically. 'You are in the case of the man who telegraphed to the house where he did not wish to stay, "So sorry. Cannot come. No lie ready."'
Freddy colours.
'Peggy, if I were not so really fond of you,' he says, in an injured voice, 'I should not allow you to speak to me like that. There are days when you rasp one like a file. Prue never rasps one.'
'Is that the reason why you think yourself justified in always letting her go to the wall?' asks Margaret, with a bitterness that seems out of proportion to the occasion; but in her mind's eye she sees the poor little figure that has been frolicking among the geraniums with dog and cat—sees, too, the metamorphosis that will be worked in it.
Freddy rolls his curly head uneasily to and fro on the chair-back.
'You talk as if I were not quite as disappointed as she,' he says, in a lamentable tone. 'But what is one to do? When one has guests, one must entertain them. Somebody must entertain her.'
'Must entertain whom?'
'Oh, you know as well as I do! You are only asking out of ill-nature. Betty, of course!'
'Betty, of course!' repeats she after him, with an indefinable accent.
'Well, Peggy, I appeal to you. What could I do, when she asked me point-blank? You know that I never can refuse to do anything that anybody asks me point-blank.'