"Whose then?" said Mrs. Busby sharply.
Rotha hesitated.
"Mrs. Mowbray's!" cried Antoinette. "It is Mrs. Mowbray again! Mamma, I should think you would feel yourself insulted. Mrs. Mowbray is ridiculous! As if you could not get proper stockings for Rotha, but she must put her hand in."
"I think it is very indelicate of Mrs. Mowbray; and Rotha is welcome to tell her I say so," Mrs. Busby uttered with some discomposure. Rotha's discomposure on the other hand cooled, and a sense of amusement got up. It is funny, to see people running hard after the wrong quarry; when they have no business to be running at all. However, she must speak now.
"It is not Mrs. Mowbray's nonsense either," she said. "Mr. Southwode got them for me."
"Mr. Southwode!"—Mrs. Busby spoke out those two words, and the rest of her mind she kept to herself.
"Mamma," said Antoinette, "Mr. Southwode is as great a goose as other folks. But then, gentlemen don't know things—how should they?"
"You are a goose yourself, Antoinette," said her mother.
"Have you no cotton a little finer? I mean a good deal finer?" said
Rotha, going back to the business question.
"There are no stockings in my house to need it."