"Only yesterday!" she said. "I don"t see how I have got this letter so quickly. I thought it was at least the day before."
"No," said Frances, "it was only yesterday. We went a long walk in the afternoon, and of course we didn"t see you till this morning. We couldn"t have told you till just now, and I thought--I think--I thought Ja.s.s was waiting to speak to you alone after breakfast."
"It wasn"t that," said Jacinth. "If you want to know exactly why I didn"t begin about it at breakfast, Aunt Alison, it was because I had a sort of idea or fancy that you had heard already from Lady Myrtle. I thought you looked just a little annoyed, and I kept expecting you to say something about it, and then, of course, I would have told you everything there was to tell."
Miss Alison Mildmay was severe, but she was not distrustful or suspicious, and the candour of the two girls was unmistakable.
"I am sorry," she said, "to have judged you unfairly. Tell me the whole story now, and then I will read you what this eccentric old lady says."
She smiled a little.
"That was just what she said you"d call her," broke in Frances. "But she said her letter would make you understand."
"Oh yes, of course it does, to a certain extent," replied her aunt. Then her eyes fell on the envelope--"Miss Alison Mildmay."
"Considering I have lived twenty years at Thetford," she said, rather bitterly, "I think it, to say the least, unnecessary to address me like this, though of course I don"t deny that it is, strictly speaking, correct."
Jacinth glanced at it.
"I am sure"--she began. "You don"t think _I_ had anything to do with it?"
"Oh no, I don"t suppose you ever thought of it. But Lady Myrtle Goodacre has never seen fit to call upon me, so it is all of a piece. I really must not waste any more time, however; I have a dozen things waiting for me to do. You say it was yesterday afternoon?"
"Yes," said Jacinth. "We went a long walk--to Aldersmere, and coming back, Eugene was tired and very thirsty, and he begged us to let him ask for a drink just as we were getting near Robin Redbreast, and the old lady heard us talking over the wall"----
"And she heard Ja.s.s"s name," interrupted Frances, "and"----
"Let Jacinth tell it, if you please, Frances," said Miss Mildmay.
So Jacinth took up the story again, and related all that had happened.
Her aunt listened attentively, her face softened.
"I don"t think I need read you what Lady Myrtle has written, after all,"
she said, when Jacinth had finished speaking. "I understand it well enough, and I have no doubt your father and mother would like you to go to Robin Redbreast now and then; of course, not to any extreme, or so as to interfere with your lessons or regular ways."
"Does Lady Myrtle ask you to go to see her too?" inquired Jacinth, half timidly.
"Oh dear, no," replied Miss Mildmay: "she is straightforward enough. She does not pretend to want to make _my_ acquaintance, and after all why should she? She has had plenty of time to do so if she had wished it during all these years; and honestly," and here again she smiled quite naturally, "I don"t want to know her. I have no time for fresh acquaintances. And her interest in you children, Jacinth especially, has nothing to do with our side. It is entirely connected with the Morelands."
"I wonder how she and our grandmother came to be such friends," said Jacinth. "Lady Myrtle"s old home was near here, and the Morelands didn"t belong to this neighbourhood."
"No, but the Elvedons have another place in the north near your grandmother"s old home," said Miss Mildmay, who was very well posted up in such matters. "They have never lived all the year round at Elvedon, I fancy, and now of course it is let."
"Lady Myrtle"s name used to be Harper, she told us," said Frances, who never cared to be very long left out of the conversation, "and there are some girls called Harper at our school. But Jacinth says it"s quite a common name."
"No, Frances, I didn"t say that," said Jacinth. "I said it wasn"t an _un_common name; that sounds quite different."
"Possibly the Harpers at Miss Scarlett"s may be some connection--distant, probably--of the Elvedons," said Miss Mildmay, carelessly. "But of course it is not, as Jacinth says, an uncommon name."
But her remark set Frances"s imagination to work.
"They are very, _very_ nice girls--the nicest at the school," she said.
"Their names are Bessie and Margaret. If you could only see them, Aunt Alison! I do _so_ wish you would let us ask them to tea some Sat.u.r.day."
"Nonsense, child," said Miss Mildmay, impatiently. "I cannot begin things of that kind, as you might understand. You have companionship at school, and when you are at home you must be content with your own society. Now you must leave me: I have to see the cook, and I have made myself late already."
"Frances," said Jacinth on their way up-stairs to their own little sitting-room, "I do think you are the _silliest_ girl I ever knew. Just after all that discussion--and I can tell you I was shaking in my shoes for ever so long--just when it had ended so well, you must go and vex Aunt Alison by wanting to have the Harpers here at tea. I think you are absurd about those girls, as you always are about new friends. _I_ don"t want them here at tea, or at anything."
"Well, I do, then, or rather I did," said Frances doggedly. "That"s just all the difference. No girls have as dull a life as we have."
"It"s a very silly time for you to begin complaining, just when we have a chance of some amus.e.m.e.nt and change," said Jacinth. "I"m almost sure Lady Myrtle will ask us to spend the day, or something like that, very soon."
"I don"t want to go. It"s you she cares for, and you may keep her to yourself," said Frances, waxing more and more cross. "I wish I was a boarder at school. I"d like it far better than being always scolded by you."
It was not often that Frances so rebelled, or that their small squabbles went so nearly the length of a quarrel. But this morning there seemed disturbance in the air; and to add to it, when Frances had finished her English lessons, and was about to begin her French translation, she found, to her dismay, that she had forgotten to bring an important book home with her.
"What _shall_ I do?" she exclaimed, forgetting, in her distress, the unfriendly state of feeling between herself and her sister. "I really must have it, or I shall miss all my marks in the French cla.s.s, and you know, Jacinth, I had set my heart on getting the prize."
Jacinth"s sympathy was aroused. She herself was in a higher cla.s.s than her sister, but she was greatly interested in Frances"s success. For Frances was rather a giddy little person. Till the companionship and emulation at school had roused her, she had never bestowed more attention on her lessons than was absolutely unavoidable.
"I don"t know what to do," said the elder girl after some reflection. "I don"t see how you are to get the book till Monday."
For there was a strict rule at the school, that day-scholars were neither to go there nor to send messages from their homes, out of school hours. So that forgettings of books required for preparation, or other carelessnesses of the kind, became serious matters.
"If I don"t get it till I go to school on Monday, I needn"t get it at all," said Frances. "There"s no comfort in telling me that. You know the cla.s.s _is_ on Monday morning, so I"ve as good as lost my chance already, and I needn"t bother about it any more. I"ll never try for a prize again, I know that."
She began to hum a tune in a would-be-indifferent, reckless way, but Jacinth knew that this was only bravado, and that it would be followed by great vexation of spirit, and she felt sorry and anxious.
"I"ll tell you what, Frances," she said at last, after sitting for some time, her head resting on her hand, her own work at a standstill for the moment--"I"ll tell you what: the only plan is this--for you to go straight to Miss Scarlett herself and tell her all about your having forgotten the book, and how anxious you are about the prize. I daresay she"d let you go to your shelf and fetch it; she would see you had not broken her rule."
It was a good idea, and Frances recognised this, but all the same she did not like it at all.
"I"d have to go to the front-door," she said reluctantly, as she sat drumming her fingers on the table, "and I can"t go alone."
"There"s no need for you to go alone: take Phebe. Aunt Alison wouldn"t mind your taking her in the morning for once. I"ll help her to put away our things from the laundress, or whatever it is she"s busy about. And I think you"d better go at once, Frances, if you"re going."
"Aunt Alison won"t be in till dinner-time, so I can"t go till after then," said Frances.
"Yes, you can," Jacinth persisted. "You know you can. I undertake to put it all right with Aunt Alison. Do go at once. If I have half an hour quietly to myself, I shall have finished my lessons by the time you come in--it won"t take you more than half an hour--and then I can help Phebe."
"If I could see Miss Marcia Scarlett I shouldn"t mind so much," next said Frances, still irresolutely.
Jacinth"s patience began to give way.
"You are too bad, Frances," she said. "You are spoiling my work and losing any chance you have of getting the book. If you wait till the afternoon, most likely all the Miss Scarletts will be out or engaged, and I rather think--yes, I am sure the boarders told me that the school-books are locked up at noon on Sat.u.r.day till Monday morning. Ask for Miss Marcia, if you like; you"ve just as good a chance of seeing her as the others. But you must decide. Are you going or not?"
Frances got up slowly from her seat and moved towards the door.