“Yes, miss, but—”
“My good woman, do you realize that your ‘buts’ are insulting?”
“Oh, I didn’t go to be insulting—”
“Then that’s all…. Hurry now, Mouse!”
On the stairs, ascending, she whispered, with the excitement not of a tired woman, but of a tennis-and-dancing-mad girl: “We’re off! Just take a tooth-brush. Put on an outing suit—any old thing—and an old cap.”
She darted into her room.
Now Mr. Wrenn had, for any old thing, as well as for afternoon and evening dress, only the sturdy undistinguished clothes he was wearing, so he put on a cap, and hoped she wouldn’t notice. She didn’t. She came knocking in fifteen minutes, trim in a khaki suit, with low thick boots and a jolly tousled blue tam-o’-shanter.
“Come on. There’s a train for Chelmsford in half an hour, my time-table confided to me. I feel like singing.”
CHAPTER X
HE GOES A-GIPSYING
They rode out of London in a third-class compartment, opposite a curate and two stodgy people who were just people and defied you (Istra cheerfully explained to Mr. Wrenn) to make anything of them but just people.