“Indeed you are, then!” her mother retorted. “Do you think I would leave you here all day with that fellow? A nice talk we should make!”
“You are perfectly welcome to that fellow, mother, and as he’s accepted he will have to go with you, and there won’t be any talk. But, as I remarked before, I am not going.”
“Why aren’t you going, I should like to know?”
“Because I don’t like the company.”
“What do you mean? Have you got anything against Mr. Breckon?”
“He’s insipid, but as long as Ellen don’t mind it I don’t care. I object to Mr. Trannel!”
“Why?”
“I don’t see why I should have to tell you. If I said I liked him you might want to know, but it seems to me that my not liking him is—my not liking him is my own affair.” There was a kind of logic in this that silenced Mrs. Kenton for the moment. In view of her advantage Lottie relented so far as to add, “I’ve found out something about him.”
Mrs. Kenton was imperative in her alarm. “What is it?” she demanded.
Lottie answered, obliquely: “Well, I didn’t leave The Hague to get rid of them, and then take up with one of them at Scheveningen.”