‘Well, she’s so frightfully superior,’ she said at last, looking apologetic, a little sheepish. ‘I do hate bossy people, do you?’ Her eyes sought Judith’s with a flicker of appeal.
‘Well, that’s what it is,’ she said with relief.
Judith took her arm and patted it, saying laughingly: ‘Mariella, you’re afraid of her, I do believe! You know you’d never dare sack her. Shall I come and do it for you?’
‘Well’—Mariella dropped her voice and said in an embarrassed confiding way, ‘She simply doesn’t take any notice of me—absolutely none. His own mother! I really sometimes wonder if.... Do you suppose——’ She stopped, and a faint flush suffused her whole face.
‘What, Mariella?’ said Judith softly.
‘Well, I sometimes wonder if Julian could possibly have told her I—I don’t know how to look after him.’
She stooped again over the water, and her curls fell forward, hiding her face.
‘Oh no, Mariella! He couldn’t.... He’d never do a thing like that.’
But was it not more than possible?