She was speaking to Alicia Livingstone in the dormitory, changing at the same time for a “turn” at the hospital. It was six o'clock in the afternoon. Alicia's landau stood at the door of the Baker Institution. She had come to find that Miss Howe was just going on duty and could not be taken for a drive.
“When?” asked Alicia, staring out of the window at the crows in a tamarind tree.
“Last Saturday. He said he had promised some friends of his the pleasure of meeting me. They had besieged him, he said, and they were his best friends, on all his committees.”
“Only ladies?” The crows, with a shriek of defiance at nothing in particular, having flown away, Miss Livingstone transferred her attention.
“Bless me, yes. What Archdeacon has dear men friends! And lesquelles pense-tu, mon Dieu!”
“Lesquelles?”
“Mrs. Jack Forrester, Mrs. Fitz—what you may call him up on the frontier, the Brigadier gentleman—Lady Dolly!”
“You were well chaperoned.”
“And—my dear—he didn't ask a single Sister!” Hilda turned upon her a face which appeared still to glow with the stimulus of the archidiaconal function. “And—it was wicked considering the occasion—I dropped the character. I let myself out!”
“You didn't shock the Archdeacon?”