"Do you think so?" Basil answered with unchanged good humour.
"I never took my lessons from anybody."
"Perhaps it would have been better if you had."
"And you are spoiling her," Mrs. Starling added inconsistently.
"I wonder you haven't."
Mrs. Starling paused to consider what the minister meant. Before she came to speech again, he rose from the table.
"Will you come to my study, Diana, after breakfast?"
"Who's goin' to make my cake, then?" cried the mistress of the house.
"Society's to meet here again this afternoon."
"I'll make it, mother—a mountain cake, if you like," said Diana, also rising. "Basil won't want me all the morning." But she was eager to hear what he had to say to her, and hurried after him. He had seemed to her more than usually preoccupied.
"I do think," she remarked as she reached the study, "the Society eat more cake than—their work is worth."