Mrs. Grigsby heaved her usual sigh over Flea's shortcomings. Good woman and good mother though she was, she would not have been sorry to see Bea in high favor with her rich aunt, even at the expense of her less attractive sister. Bea would do her mother's training credit anywhere. "Poor Flea," as her mother often lamented, "was nobody's pretty child, and too odd for anything."
"Is she often out as late as this?" asked Mrs. McLaren. "Is it quite safe for her to come home alone from school after sunset?"
Mrs. Grigsby repeated her sigh. "Flea takes after her father in headiness," she remarked, in sickly jest.
Her husband paid no heed to the fling.
"If she is not in soon, I shall go to look after her," he said, peering through the window at the darkening landscape. "Mr. Tayloe is an excellent teacher, but, as you say, Jean, it is not right to keep a girl out after dark. She wasn't kept in over the sum she did last night, was she?"—looking at Bea. "I know that was right."
Bea was discreet and mysterious. "I didn't ask any questions, sir. I only heard Mr. Tayloe say she must stay in for an hour after school."
Mrs. McLaren glanced at Dee. He sat upon a cricket in a corner near her, apparently asleep; but at Bea's reply he unclosed his eyes in languid surprise upon his sister.
"The laddie knows something he could tell, if he would," said his aunt, laying her hand upon the bullet head.
"'Twould be tellin' tales out o' school," muttered the boy, reddening bashfully. "If 'twouldn't, I could tell a heap o' things."
Mrs. McLaren's hand, passing gently over his head, was checked by something she felt there.