Part 10 (1/2)

”More like she's got a sensible governess who doesn't let her waste good pen and paper on such rubbish,” old Nurse severely pointed the moral.

”What do girls want to write to one another for?” said Cedric. ”They can't Have anything to say.”

Barbara, who was secretly curious, seized the opportunity.

”What does she write about, Alex?”

Alex would have liked to tell them to mind their own business, but she knew that any accusation of making mysteries would bring down Nurse's wrath upon her, and as likely as not the confiscation of the letter.

She read it aloud hastily, with a pretence of skipping here and there, leaving out the ”dear Alex” at the beginning, and the whole of the last sentence and the postscript.

”I suppose you've left out all the darlings and the loves and kisses,”

Cedric remarked scornfully, more from conventionality than anything else.

Alex was not averse to having it supposed that Queenie had been more lavish with endearments than she had in reality shown herself.

”Who are the Munroes?” asked Barbara. ”Are they nice?”

”The American girls who crossed from Liege with me. I remember now, they were going to spend their holidays with an aunt somewhere in Devons.h.i.+re.”

”Perhaps we shall see them. How old are they?”

”Sadie and Diana are much older than you,” Alex told her crus.h.i.+ngly. ”In fact, they're older than I am. But the little one, Marie, is only twelve.”

”Where does the aunt live?”

”How should I know?” said Alex. She reflected bitterly that even if her schoolmates should ever meet her in Devons.h.i.+re, it would be impossible for her to make any advance to them, with old Nurse, even more strictly mindful of the conventions than Lady Isabel.

But for once it seemed as though fate were on Alex' side.

”I hear,” wrote Lady Isabel, in one of her hasty, collective letters, addressed impartially to ”My darling Children,” ”that Mrs. Alfred Cardew, who lives at a very pretty house called Trevose, not more than a few miles from where you are, has her three little nieces with her for the holidays, and that they are at the same convent as Alex. So if you like, darlings, as I know Mrs. Alfred Cardew quite well, you may ask Nurse to let you arrange some little picnic or other and invite the three children.”

Alex, taken by surprise, felt doubtful. She did not know whether she wanted to expose herself to the criticisms which she thought, disparagingly gazing round at her brothers and sisters and their autocratic guardian, they would inevitably call forth from strangers.

Suppose they came, and Barbara was shy and foolish, and Cedric doggedly bored, and then the Munroes went back to Liege next term and laughed at Alex, and told the other girls what queer relations she had. And again, thought Alex, Nurse would probably think the Americanisms, which had amused Queenie and Alex at the convent, merely vulgar, and Barbara and Cedric would wonder.

”You _are_ extraordinary, Alex!” said Barbara petulantly. ”You're always talking about your friends at the convent and saying how nice they are, and then when there's a chance of our seeing them too, you don't seem to want to have them.”

”Yes, I do,” said Alex hastily, and consoled herself with the reflection that very likely the plan would never materialize.

But as luck would have it, Alex, the very next day, saw Sadie Munroe waving to her excitedly from the carriage where she was driving with a very gaily-dressed lady, obviously the aunt.

The following week, a charming note invited Alex, Barbara, Cedric and Archie to lunch and spend the afternoon at Trevose. They should be fetched in the pony-cart, and driven back after tea.

At least, Alex reflected thankfully, old Nurse would not be there to put her to shame.

About Archie, with his clean sailor suit and s.h.i.+ning curls, she felt no anxiety. He was always a success.