The moment Rose got quit of Susan, she said to herself complacently, "It is very nice to have done such a service to Mrs. Jennings and Hester and everybody, instead of having got into a scrape and being scolded, as I almost feared at one moment. If only Miss Kate Ironside is not too much of a dumb belle and a mere school-girl," reflected Rose, with the supercilious consciousness of maturity in a girl who had been more than a year away from all teaching except what she had herself practised, and what she received as a grown-up woman at Mr. St. Foy's. "I wonder if Dr. Harry Ironside will have spoken of our encounter, and what came of it, to Annie before I can tell her. I should like to see her face when she learns that I know somebody who goes to St. Ebbe's," ended Rose, with persistent audacity.
Annie's face was a study when she heard of it. Rose had been guilty of a little wilful self-deception, still she received a shock.
The first time the sisters were able to meet and have a walk together, after Rose's encounter with Dr. Ironside, Rose broached the great piece of news, and witnessed the effect it produced. The girls had managed to reach the Marble Arch into Hyde Park, beyond which they found a seat for a few minutes. It was not too early in the season for them to take possession of it, and they were still sufficiently strangers in London to suppose that seats were placed for the accommodation of the weary of all ranks and both sexes, and not merely for the benefit of nurse-maids and their charges, or of able-bodied tramps. The sisters prepared to talk over their own concerns and Redcross with the empressement of girls, to forget all about the moving crowd around them, and the grinding of that great mill of London in the traffic that is never for an instant still.
"Oh! Annie, have you seen him lately?" began Rose—"Dr. Harry Ironside, I mean. Has he told you that he and his sister are coming to board at Mrs. Jennings's?"
"Seen him! Dr. Harry Ironside! What do you know about Dr. Harry Ironside? What are you saying, Rose?" cried Annie, sitting bolt upright, opening wide her dark eyes, and fixing them in the most amazed, displeased, discomfiting gaze on Rose. The rate at which the two had been walking and talking, the suspicion of east wind, the premature heat of the May sun, had converted the soft red in Annie's cheeks to a brilliant scarlet.
"What I am saying," answered Rose, nodding gaily, and trying hard not to flinch under the trying reception of her precious piece of information, "is that, by the funniest chance, I made the acquaintance of a friend of yours at St. Ebbe's. And the laughable coincidence of our meeting and happening to speak to each other, and then of my finding out that he knew all about you, is going to be a very good thing for poor dear Mrs. Jennings," Rose hastened to add, taking the first word in self-defence. "He is coming with his sister to board in Welby Square."
"He is not a friend of mine," said Annie, severely. "Is it possible that you are such a simpleton as to believe that all the doctors, medical students, and nurses—the whole staff of St. Ebbe's, in fact, are intimately acquainted with each other, are acquainted at all, for the most part, unless as doctors and nurses? Please, Rose, tell me at once what nonsense this is—what foolish thing you have been about."
When Annie said "please" to her sisters the situation was alarming.
On the other hand, Rose had not come up to London to be an artist, who was already getting orders for scroll-work and executing them successfully, to be put down by a sister not above four years her senior.
"What are you making such a fuss about, Annie?" protested Rose, "I am telling you as fast as you will let me. I came out this morning for the express purpose, and I thought—I was almost sure—you would be amused and interested, instead of 'getting into a wax'"—using one of Hester Jennings's slang words, which set Annie's fine little teeth on edge. "It is you who ought to explain and apologize to me," proceeded Rose, boldly; "I am surely at liberty to make the acquaintance of anybody you know without your looking annoyed, and accusing me of being foolish and nonsensical. It is very unjust and ungrateful of you besides, for he spoke very highly of you," Rose finished innocently.