Chapter Seven
Mrs Lilford’s Tenant
In the increasing interest of getting the house at Pinnerton Green into order, the arrival of the furniture from Bordeaux, the unpacking of various precious belongings which had been left to come with the heavy things by sea, all of which necessitated almost daily expeditions to the new home, Mrs Derwent and her daughters forgot to think much of Mrs Burgess and her unwelcome offers of introductions.
And as Mrs Wandle did not present herself, they began to hope that perhaps the doctor’s wife was as short of memory as she was hard of hearing.
Still the latent fear was there, though what was to be done to evade the acquaintance, it was difficult to say.
One afternoon – a dull, December afternoon, when the air was misty and penetratingly cold, and one could only feel thankful it had not the addition of smoke to turn it into fog of the first quality – the little family was sitting in Miss Halliday’s well-warmed, best parlour, glad that the walk to Pinnerton Lodge had taken place that morning, before the day had become so ungenial; and Stasy was proposing that, to cheer them up a little, they should have afternoon tea rather earlier than usual, when suddenly a sharp rat-tat-tat at the front door – for the house owned both knocker and bell – followed by a resounding tinkle, made them all start.
“Who can it be?” said Blanche. “It isn’t often that any one both rings and knocks.”
“A telegram,” said Mrs Derwent. “No; that isn’t likely. There is no one to telegraph to us.”
Then Deborah was heard hurrying along the passage; her footsteps sounded as if she were somewhat flurried with the anticipation of a visitor of more importance than the postman or milkman. The ladies listened with curiosity, as a colloquy ensued between Deborah and some person or persons unknown, ending, after some little delay, by footsteps slow and heavy, following the small servant’s patter along the passage.
Blanche glanced at her mother.
“Mrs Wandle,” she ejaculated in a stage whisper. – “Stasy, jump up. For goodness’ sake, let us be dignified to her.”
For Stasy was sitting on a low footstool on the hearthrug, doing nothing, as was rather a favourite occupation of hers, and greatly enjoying the agreeable glow of the fire, which had sunk down to the pleasant redness preceding the sad necessity of “fresh coals,” and the consequent “spoiling it all” for the next half-hour.
“Coal-fires are very interesting, I find,” she had just been saying. “It almost makes up for the pleasure of turning the logs and seeing the sparks fly out, to watch the pictures in a coal-fire. The fairy castles and the caverns, and the – Oh, there is Monsieur Bergeret’s nose! Do look, Blanche. Did you ever see anything so exactly like?”
But “Jump up, Stasy,” was all the reply she got, and as the door slowly opened, a repeated whispered warning – “Mrs Wandle.”
The name was not clearly audible which Deborah announced, but she announced something, and to the prepossessed ears of her audience it sounded as like “Mrs Wandle” as anything else. And in trotted, with as much dignity as a stout, short person can achieve, a lady enveloped in furs and wraps, who, after glancing round her with a sort of “nonchalant” curiosity, held out a somewhat limp hand to Mrs Derwent.
“How de do?” she began. “I heard from Mrs – ” (afterwards, with a sensation of guilt and self-reproach, Blanche had to own to herself that the name had not sounded like “Burgess”) “that you – I mean that she would like me to call, though it’s quite out of my way to come into Blissmore. Are these your daughters? – How de do? how de do?”
And then she sank into a chair, apparently at an end of her conversational resources.
“What an impertinent, vulgar old cat!” thought Stasy, shivering prospectively at the “all your doings” which she felt sure were in reserve for her.
But aloud, of course, she said nothing, only sat motionless, her great dark eyes fixed on the stranger with a peculiar expression which Blanche knew well.
For a moment or two there was silence. Then Mrs Derwent’s clear, quiet tones sounded through the room.
“I am sorry you should have inconvenienced yourself by coming out of your way to see us,” she said. “I trust you will not dream of giving yourself the trouble a second time.”
“Well, no, I don’t think I shall,” the visitor replied calmly. “I hear you are going to live at Pinnerton. I should be glad to show you the pictures, and anything else you care to see, if you come over some day. It’s not a very long walk over the fields.”
“Some of us go to Pinnerton nearly every day,” said Mrs Derwent, “but it is too far for me to walk. When I go, I drive. But I did not know there was a short cut to Pinnerton. We have always gone by the road.”
“I didn’t say to Pinnerton,” said the visitor. “I said from Pinnerton. I don’t live there, but I heard you were going to live there.”
“So we are,” Mrs Derwent replied, rather bewildered.
Evidently this could not be the Mrs Wandle, the Pinnerton Green Mrs Wandle, that was to say, and yet – she had distinctly said that she had been asked to call upon them.
“You used to live in our neighbourhood, I hear,” the stout lady proceeded. “Fleming, I think that was the name?”
“No,” Mrs Derwent replied rather sharply. If there was one thing in the world she cordially detested, it was to be confused with the Fleming family, whom she remembered, before they came to Fotherley, as very objectionable. “No, my name was Fenning. My father was vicar of Fotherley, and Mr Fleming, who succeeded him there, and was once his curate, had a small living in the neighbourhood.”
“Oh, indeed – yes, Fenning or Fleming. I knew it was some such name. Well, Mrs Flem – I beg your pardon, Mrs Derwent. If you like to come over some day when you are at Pinnerton, you can see through the house, even if I am not at home. I will leave orders. I can’t promise to go to see you at Pinnerton, for it’s quite out of my way. Even when I am at East Moddersham, I always go and come by the other side.”
“At East Moddersham?” said the Derwents to themselves, more completely perplexed than ever. “Did the Wandles visit there?”
“East Moddersham is Sir Conway Marth’s, is it not?” said Blanche. “Can you tell me if that charming-looking girl whom I have seen riding about there is his niece?”
The visitor looked at her for a moment without speaking. It was a calm, deliberate taking stock of her, of which Blanche felt the extreme though, quite possibly, not intended rudeness, and her cheeks grew crimson. On the whole, the taking stock seemed to result favourably.
“No, but she is his ward,” the stout lady replied; “I suppose you mean Lady Hebe Shetland. She is very lovely,” and a softer and more genial expression came over the plain face as she spoke. “You have lived a great deal in France, I hear,” she went on, continuing to address Blanche. “It must have been a great advantage to you. I suppose you speak French quite well – without any accent?”
“Naturally,” said Stasy, and her clear, rather shrill voice almost made the others jump. “How could we help speaking it perfectly, when it was the language of the country we were born and brought up in?” She got no reply. The lady glanced at her for half an instant, as if to say, “What an impertinent child!” – then turned again to Blanche. “I should like you to come to luncheon with me some day. I will let you know a day that I shall be quite alone, so that we could talk French all the time. I want to rub up my French. Mr Dunstan and I go abroad every year, and I like to speak French perfectly.”
Then, quite satisfied that she had made herself most agreeable, the visitor rose, and saying as she shook hands, “I shall tell Mrs Lilford I saw you. And you must come over to see the pictures some day,” she slowly made her way to the door, which Blanche had scarcely presence of mind enough left to open for her. There was no need to ring for Deborah, who was waiting in the passage, in a state of flutter.
“Deborah,” said Blanche, as soon as the front door, disclosing a view of a ponderous-looking carriage in attendance, had finally closed, “Who is that lady? Is it a Mrs Wandle, or who?”
“Lor, Miss – Mrs Wandle! No indeed, Miss; its Lady Harriot Dunstan – the lady as lives at Alderwood Park.”
Blanche went back into the sitting-room, and shut the door.
“Mamma,” she said, “do you know who that was? It was Mrs Lilford’s friend – at least I suppose she is her friend, as well as her tenant – Lady Harriot Dunstan.”
“And we thought she was Mrs Wandle, the brewers wife!” said Stasy, going off into a fit of laughter. “Whoever she is, she is a vulgar, impertinent old cat. – Oh, mamma, are all English people so stupid and horrid? Why, she’s worse than Mrs Burgess.”
The mention of Mrs Burgess brought a look of annoyance to Blanche’s face.
“It has all come of your hinting to Mr Burgess that we should like his wife to call, Stasy,” she said. “Lady Harriot may not be the most charming or intelligent of human beings, but still, if we hadn’t had our heads full of Wandles and Burgesses, we should have met her differently, and perhaps got on better with her. She must have thought us very stiff and queer in our manners.”
“Yes,” agreed Mrs Derwent, “I am sorry about it, certainly. This Lady Harriot seems the only direct link I have, as she is evidently an intimate friend of Mrs Lilford, Sir Adam’s niece. It must be in consequence of my letter to Mrs Lilford that she has called. But – she surely cannot have been told much about us, or she would not have been so – so – ”
“So horribly rude and patronising,” said Stasy. “Oh, mamma, whoever she is, and even if we were never to make any friends at all, don’t let us have anything to do with such people as that. And I – I used to think English people were all so nice and refined!”
The tears rose to her eyes – tears partly of disappointment and mortification, partly of vexation with herself. And instantly, as was always the case where Stasy was concerned, the hearts of her mother and sister softened to her again.
“My dear child, how you do rush at conclusions!” Mrs Derwent exclaimed. “Because we have come across two commonplace, perhaps I must say vulgar-minded women, you make up your mind that English society is composed of such people.”
“And,” Blanche added eagerly, “did you notice, mamma, how even Lady Harriot’s dull face lighted up when she spoke of Lady Hebe? Mamma, I am perfectly certain that girl is as good as she is charming. It refreshes me merely to think of her face – Stasy, I wish you had seen her better.”
“I did see her well enough. I thought she was lovely, and she looked as if she’d never had a trouble in her life. Oh, I daresay there are some nice people in England, but I don’t believe we shall know any of them,” said Stasy very lugubriously.
The next morning threw more light on the visit of the day before, for it brought a letter from Mrs Lilford. Mrs Derwent, guessing who was the writer, opened it with interest and some curiosity, but she had not read far before she startled her daughters with a sudden exclamation.
“What is it, mamma?” said Blanche.
“It is from Mrs Lilford, Sir Adam Nigel’s niece,” she said; “and, fancy, Blanchie – I am so delighted – he is not dead. Dear old Sir Adam, I mean. Listen. I may be hearing from him before very long.”
And she went on to read aloud from the letter.
“I am glad to say that you have been misinformed about my uncle. Though he left Alderwood several years ago, at which time he gave it up to me, he is still living. His health would not stand English winters, and he spends eight or nine months of the year in Algeria. When I write to him next, I will tell him of your return to England. In the meantime I have asked my friend and tenant, Lady Harriot Dunstan, to call upon you, and I have no doubt she will be glad to be of any little neighbourly service in her power.” Then followed Sir Adam Nigel’s address, and a few sufficiently cordial words. But the tone of the whole was barely “friendly,” though ladylike and courteous.
Mrs Derwent, however, was too pleased with the news of Sir Adam to think much of anything else.
“I am so delighted,” she repeated – “so glad to think I shall see him again.”
Blanche took up the letter, and toyed with it in her fingers. The distant Sir Adam seemed to her and Stasy of less importance than matters nearer at hand. Her silence caught her mother’s attention.
“It is a nice letter,” Mrs Derwent said.
“Oh yes,” said Blanche; “but she doesn’t seem very interested in us, mamma. And then, of course, as she has let Alderwood, she is not going to live here; so perhaps it doesn’t very much matter. But I wish that Lady Harriot had been nicer.”
Mrs Derwent’s face lost its joyous expression.
“I wish Sir Adam were going to be at Alderwood again,” she said with a little sigh. “That would have made all the difference. Mrs Lilford did not know me well. She was four or five years older, and she married and went to India before I was grown up. She only remembers me as a child more or less. But now I can write to Sir Adam himself, and he will be sure to ask some old friends to come to see us.”
And that very day she did so.
But the result was not what she had hoped. A few thoroughly kind words from her old friend came in response in the course of a week or two, hoping to see her and her children on his return to England the following spring, but evidently not “taking in” the Derwents’ present loneliness. “I hear from Amy Lilford that she has asked her tenants to look after you a little,” he said. “I don’t know them personally, but you will like to have the run of the old place again.”
And Mrs Derwent could not make up her mind to trouble him further. “Men hate writing any letters that are not business ones,” she said to Blanche. “We must just wait till he comes back in the spring, and make ourselves as happy as we can till then; though, of course, I hope some people will call on us as soon as we are settled. The Marths at East Moddersham could scarcely do less.”
To some little extent her expectations were fulfilled. The wife of the vicar of Blissmore called. The vicar was a younger son of the important Enneslie family, enjoying the living in his father’s gift after old-fashioned orthodox fashion, and Mrs Enneslie was a conscientious “caller” on all her husbands parishioners. She had perception enough to discern the Derwents’ refinement and superiority at a glance, but she was a very busy woman, with experience enough to know that to be accepted by the “County,” much more than these qualities was demanded. And she contented herself with such kindly attentions to the strangers as lay in her own power. She did a little more. She spoke of them to her brother, the Pinnerton Green parson, who promised that his wife should look them up as soon as they came under his clerical wing.
“They seem nice girls,” she said, with perhaps some kindly meant diplomacy. “It would be good for them to do a little Sunday-schooling or something of that kind.”
So the weeks passed, bringing with them the exasperating delays which every one in the agonies of house changing thinks peculiar to one’s own case; and Christmas came and went before the Derwents could even name a time with any certainty for taking possession of their new home. It was a dull Christmas. Not that, with their French experience, the young people were accustomed to Yule-tide joviality; but they had heard so much about it – had pictured to themselves the delights of an overflowing country-house, the glories of a real English Christmas, as their mother had so often from their earliest years described it to them.
And the reality – Miss Halliday’s best sitting-room, with some sprigs of holly, a miniature (though far from badly made) plum-pudding, no presents or felicitations except those they gave each other!
“Another of my illusions gone,” said Stasy, with half-comical pathos, which drew forth a warning whisper from Blanche of “Don’t, Stasy. It worries mamma,” and aloud the reminder:
“Everything will be quite different when we are in our own house, you silly girl.”
And when at last the own house did come, and the pleasant stage began of making the rooms home-like and pretty with the old friends so long immured in packing cases, and the new dainty trifles picked up in London, in spite of the fogs, for a short time they were all very busy, and perfectly happy – satisfied that the lonely half-homesick feeling had only been a passing experience.
“I am really glad not to have made new friends till now,” said Mrs Derwent. “It does look so different here, though we have been very comfortable at Miss Halliday’s, and she has been most good to us.”
“Yes,” Blanche agreed; “and I think we should make up our minds to be happy here, whether we know many nice people or not, mamma. The only thing I really care about is a little good companionship for Stasy.”
“She must not make friends with any girls beneath her – as to that I am determined,” said Mrs Derwent.
“Far better have none. Not that anything could make her common, but it would be bad for her to feel herself the superior; and I can picture her queening it over others, and then making fun of them and their homes and ways. She has such a sense of the ridiculous. No; Stasy needs to be with those she can look up to. I am sure, Blanche, it is better not to think of her going to that day-school at Blissmore.”
For Stasy was only sixteen, and the question of her studies was still a question. At Blissmore, under the shadow of the now important public school for boys, various minor institutions for girls were springing up, all, as might have been expected, of a rather mixed class, though the teaching in most was good.
And Stasy, for her part, would have thought it “great fun” to go to school for a year or so.
The matter was compromised by arrangements being made for her having private lessons at home on certain days of the week, and joining one or two classes at the best girls’ school at Blissmore on others, to which she could be escorted by Aline when she took little Herty to his day-school.
Chapter Eight
Old Scenes
By March the Derwents felt quite at home in their new abode; in one sense, almost too much so. The excitement of settling had sobered down; the housekeeping arrangements were completed, and promising to work smoothly. For Mrs Derwent had profited by her twenty years of French life in becoming a most capable and practical housewife, and being naturally quick and able to adapt herself, she soon mastered the little difficulties consequent on the very different ideas as to material questions of her own and her adopted country.
So that, in point of fact, time was in danger of hanging rather heavily on their hands; there was really so little to do!
Their peculiar position cut them off from many of the occupations with which most of us nowadays are only too heavily burdened. They had few letters to write, for Frenchwomen are not great correspondents – in the provinces, at least – and when the Derwents left Bordeaux, their old friends there extracted no promises of “writing very often – very, very often.”
“Notes,” of course, which in London seem to use up hours of each day, there was never any occasion for. They had no calls to pay, beyond a rare one at the vicarage; no visitors to receive. For the Pinnerton Green folk had not followed suit, as the Derwents had feared, after Mrs Burgess’s invasion. Nothing had been heard of Mrs Wandle, and – probably through some breath of the great Lady Harriot Dunstan’s visit, and Mrs Enneslie’s introduction of the new-comers to her relations at Pinnerton Vicarage – the immediate neighbours had held back: the “butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers” had left them in peace. Mrs Burgess having been called away to a sick sister or niece early in the winter, and not yet having returned, even the excitement of watching her tactics had been wanting.
In short, the Derwents, socially speaking, were very distinctly in the position, to use a homely old saying, of “falling between two stools.”
And though Stasy was the least to be pitied, for her lessons kept her pretty fairly busy, and she managed to find food for amusement and material for mimicry among her class companions – some of whom, too, she really liked – at Mrs Maxton’s school, she was the readiest to grumble.
“What is the use of making the house pretty when there is no one to see it?” she said to her sister one afternoon, when the two had been employing themselves in hunting for early violets and primroses in the woods, with which to adorn the library, their favourite sitting-room. There were not many of these spring treasures as yet, for the season was a late one, but they were laden with other spoil, as lovely in its way – great trails of ivy and bunches of withered or half-withered leaves of every shade, from golden brown to crimson, which in sheltered nooks were still to be found arrested in their beautiful decay.
“What is the use of making the house pretty when there is never any one to see it?” Stasy repeated, as she flicked away an unsightly twig from the quaint posy she was carrying, for Blanche had not at once replied.
“There is always use in making one’s home as pretty as possible. There are ourselves to see it, and the – the thing itself,” replied Blanche a little vaguely.
“What do you mean by the thing itself?” Stasy demanded.
“The being pretty, or the trying to be – the aiming at beauty, I suppose, I mean,” said Blanche. “Can’t you imagine a painter giving years to a beautiful picture, even though he knew no one would ever see it but himself? or a musician composing music no one would ever hear?”
“No,” said Stasy, “I can’t. That sort of thing is flights above me, Blanchie. I like human beings about me – lots of them; they generally interest me, and often amuse me. I like a good many, and I am quite ready to love some. I want sympathy and life, and – and – well, perhaps, a little admiration. And I do think it’s too horribly dull here; at least, I’m afraid it’s going to be. I would rather leave off being at all grand, and get some fun out of the Wandles, and the Beltons, and all the rest of them.”
“Mamma is still looking forward to Sir Adam’s return in the spring – well, soon, it should be now. It is spring already,” said Blanche, rather at a loss, as she often was, how to reply to Stasy’s outburst.
“I don’t believe he’ll come to see us; or if he does, I don’t suppose it would do us much good. He has been away so long, and is no use to the neighbourhood; and I believe that’s all that most people care about,” said Stasy cynically. “These families round about here live their own lives and have their own circles. They’ll all be going up to London directly, I suppose, for the season. They don’t want us, or care about quiet, not very rich, people like us. England isn’t a bit like what I thought it would be.”
“We can’t quite judge yet,” said Blanche. “And – I am sure you are too sweeping, Stasy. Mamma may have been too sanguine, and have seen things too much through rose-coloured spectacles, but she cannot be altogether mistaken in her pleasant remembrances of her old friends – the ‘best’ people – among whom she lived.”
“Would you give Lady Harriot Dunstan as a specimen?” said Stasy snappishly.
“No; she would be a common-minded, inferior woman in any class,” said Blanche. “I believe that is the truth of it all: there are refined and charming natures to be found in every class, and there are the opposite.”
“Well, then, let us hunt up a few among the Blissmore bourgeoisie, and content ourselves with them,” said Stasy.
“No,” said Blanche again. “It is one’s duty to live in one’s own class unless one is plainly shown it is necessary to leave it. And that reminds me, speaking of Lady Harriot, I really think mamma should call there, now we are settled. She did not mean to be impertinent, we must remember.”
“I don’t need to go, as I’m not out,” said Stasy. “Besides, one of us would be enough in any case. I would have liked to see Alderwood, though, but I won’t go the way those Blissmore girls go, on a ‘show’ day – ‘open to the public’ – faugh!” with great disgust.
Blanche could not help laughing.
“How consistent you are,” she said. – “Well, Herty,” as at that moment her little brother came flying out of their own gate to meet them, “why didn’t you come with us to the woods to gather leaves and hunt for violets?”
“I meant to come,” said Herty regretfully, “but when I’d finished my lessons for Monday, you were gone, and I couldn’t see you, though I ran as far down the road as I could. Oh, Blanchie,” he went on, “I met such a nice lady riding. She saw I was looking up and down, and she stopped her horse and spoke to me. I asked her if she’d seen two girls like you and Stasy, and she said no, but if she did, she’d tell you I was looking for you. She said she knew you by sight, and she hoped we liked living at Pinnerton.”
“Was it a young lady?” asked Blanche.
“Yes,” said the boy, “and she came out of those big gates, nearly opposite the lane, you know. She had a nice face, not as pretty as yours, Blanchie, but about as pretty as – ” And he glanced at his younger sister dubiously. “No, she wasn’t like Stasy. She had a more shiny face.”
“Thank you,” said Stasy. “Perhaps she uses Pears’s soap, which I don’t.”
Herty looked puzzled.
“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “It was a pretty, shiny way – out of her eyes, too. Not soapy. You are silly, Stasy.”
“I know,” said Blanche with interest, and not sorry to divert the quarrel, which she saw impending between the two – “I know who it was. It must have been the girl with the happy face – Lady Hebe. That was what Herty was trying to describe. You might say ‘sunshiny,’ instead of ‘shiny,’ Herty.”
“Yes, that’s what I meant,” he said. “Her face smiled all over.”
“And did you say we did like Pinnerton?” inquired Stasy with some eagerness.
“I said I did, except when I’d too many lessons; and I said Blanchie did, but Stasy said it was very dull.”
Stasy looked uncertain whether to be pleased or vexed.
“What did she say?” she asked.
“She said it wasn’t so bright here as in France, and she’d been there all this time since Christmas, and then she nodded and trotted away,” was Herty’s reply.
“I thought she must be away,” said Blanche.
“Why – because she has not called upon us?” said Stasy, with what was meant for extreme irony.
“No,” said Blanche quietly. “She could not call unless her friends did, of course, and I don’t think the Marths are old acquaintances of mamma’s. But I had a feeling that she was away. We should have met her, riding or walking about.”
“I don’t suppose she ever walks,” said Stasy.
“Nonsense, Stasy! English girls are not like that. And don’t you remember Mrs Harrowby, the vicar’s wife, saying the other day that some of the girls in the neighbourhood were very good about the poor people, but that, unluckily, the most influential were seldom here. It was when she was telling us about the classes she wants to get up for some of the older girls.”
“No,” said Stasy, “I didn’t pay attention. I suppose I thought she was speaking of the Miss Wandles and the Miss Beltons, and all the other Miss Somebodies or Nobodies. I don’t care about poor people: it’s not my line – excepting making a quête. I used to like doing that when I was a little girl.”
Blanche said nothing. She had considerable experience of Stasy’s contrariness.
But a certain pleasurable though vague sense of anticipation had made its way into her mind since hearing of Herty’s meeting with Lady Hebe.
“I do feel so sure she is good and unselfish and thoughtful for others,” she said to herself. “She may not have much in her power, but I feel as if she would like to be kind to us. I don’t care so much for myself, of course, though it would be nice to know her; but it is for Stasy. I am so afraid of the friends she may make if she has not nice ones.”
And Blanche’s face looked anxious and perturbed as they re-entered their own little domain, laden with their pretty spoils.
Two things happened in the course of the next few days, which somewhat broke the monotony of the Derwents’ daily life. The first was a drive to Alderwood, to return Lady Harriot’s call. Blanche impressed upon her mother that whether the visit was expected of them or not, it was due to their own dignity to make it, notwithstanding the unfavourable impression that Mrs Lilford’s tenant had left with them.
“If we don’t call, she will think us fair game for patronising and condescending to. Of course we must, and we should have done so before.”
“I have kept hoping to hear again from Sir Adam or Mrs Lilford,” said Mrs Derwent. “I should much have preferred not to meet Lady Harriot till she understood better about us.”
“She will probably ring the bell and tell the housekeeper to show us the pictures,” said Stasy. “You, not ‘us,’ I should say, for, of course, I needn’t go.”
“You can go with us for the drive and wait in the fly outside,” said Blanche.
For though they had been talking of a pony-carriage “in the spring,” they had not yet heard of a suitable steed; and on the whole, perhaps Mrs Derwent was not sorry to defer for a little any avoidable expense, the installation at Pinnerton Lodge having cost, as is always the case in such matters, much more than she had anticipated.
Stasy received her sister’s proposal with a laugh. “All right,” she said. “Anything for a spree. I’ll come.”
Something in her tone slightly grated on Blanche.
“Stasy,” she said, “I do hope even the little you see of those girls at Mrs Maxton’s is not doing you any harm. You – you seem to be catching up their expressions.”
“What b – nonsense!” said Stasy, quickly substituting the second word, though she could not help reddening a little. “Mamma, you know better than Blanche. Is there anything unladylike in ‘all right,’ or ‘a spree?’”
“I can scarcely say, my dear,” said her mother. “But I know what your sister means. It is the tone we – ”