"We had to get rid of the Nanny!"
"Didn't you approve of spanking?"
"Oh yes, but Pamela didn't."
"Pam engineered the first sit-down strike in history," Mr Nash said.
"She kept it up for seven days," Mrs Nash said. "Short of going on dressing and forcibly feeding her for the rest of her life, there was nothing to do but get rid of Nanny. A first-rate woman she was, too. We were devastated to lose her."
The music began, and in front of the high screen of the rhododendron thicket appeared the bright colours of the Junior's Swedish folk dresses. Folk-dancing had begun. Lucy sat back and thought, not of Beau's childish aberrations, but of Innes, and the way a black cloud of doubt and foreboding was making a mockery of the bright sunlight.
It was because her mind was so full of Innes that she was startled when she heard Mrs Nash say: "Mary, darling. There you are. How nice to see you again," and turned to see Innes behind them. She was wearing boy's things; the doublet and hose of the fifteenth century; and the hood that hid all her hair and fitted close round her face accentuated the bony structure that was so individual. Now that the eyes were shadowed and sunk a little in their always-deep sockets, the face had something it had not had before: a forbidding look. It was-what was the word? — a «fatal» face. Lucy remembered her very first impression that it was round faces like that that history was built.
"You have been overworking, Mary," Mr Nash said, eyeing her.
"They all have," Lucy said, to take their attention from her.
"Not Pamela," her mother said. "Pam has never worked hard in her life."