Part 9 (1/2)

'They called me Miss Mohun at home.'

'Yes, but we can't here, because of Aunt Jane.'

All this was chattered forth on the stairs before the two girls reached the dining-room, where Mysie committed the feeding of her pets to Val, and received the note, with fresh injunctions to come home by eleven, and bring word whether Miss Hacket and Miss Constance would both come to luncheon.

'Oh dear!' sighed Gillian, and there was a general groan round the table.

'It can't be helped, my dear.'

'Oh no, I know it can't,' said Gillian, resignedly.

'You see,' said Mysie. 'Yes, come along, Basto dear. You see Gill has to be--down, Basto, I say!--a young lady when.... Never mind him, Dolores, he won't hurt. When Miss Constance Hacket and--leave her alone, Basto, I say!--and she is such a goose. Not you, Dolores, but Miss Constance.'

'Oh that dog! I wish you would not take him.'

'Not take dear old Basto! Why 'tis such a treat for him to get a walk in the morning--the delight of his jolly old black heart. Isn't he a dear old fellow? and he never hurt anybody in his life! It's only setting off! He will quiet down in a minute; but I couldn't disappoint him.

Could I, my old man?'

Never having lived with animals nor entered into their feelings, Dolores could not understand how a dog's pleasure could be preferred to her comfort, and felt a good deal hurt, though Basto's antics subsided as soon as they were past the inner gate shutting in the garden from the paddock, which was let out to a farmer. Mysie, however, ran on as usual with her stream of information--

'The Miss Hacket were sister or daughters or something to some old man who used to be clergyman here, and they are all married up but these two, and they've got the dearest little house you ever saw. They had a nephew in the 111th, and so they came and called on us at once. Miss Hacket is a regular old dear, but we none of us can bear Miss Constance, except that mamma says we ought to be sorry for her because she leads such a confined life. Miss Hacket and Aunt Jane always do go on so about the G.F.S. They both are branch secretaries, you know.'

'I know! Aunt Jane did bother Mrs. Sefton so that she says she will never have another of those G.F.S. girls. She says it is a society for interference.'

'Mamma likes it,' said Mysie.

'Oh! but she is only just come.'

'Yes; but she always looked after the school children at Beechcroft before she married, and she and Alethea and Phyllis had the soldiers'

children up on Sunday. Alethea taught the little drummer boys, and they were so funny. I wonder who teaches them now! Gill always goes down to help Miss Hacket with her G.F.S. cla.s.ses. She has one on Sunday afternoon, and one on Tuesday for sewing, and she is the only young lady in the place who can do plain needlework properly.'

'Sewing-machines can work. What the use of fussing about it!'

'They can't mend,' said Mysie. 'Besides, do you know, in the American war, all the sewing-machines in the Southern States got out of order, and as all the machinery people were in the north, the poor ladies didn't know what to do, and couldn't work without them.'

'Sewing-machines are a recent invention,' said Dolores.

'Oh! you didn't think I meant the great old War of Independence. No, I meant the war about the slaves--secession they called it.'

'That is not in the history of England,' said Dolores, as if Mysie had no business to look beyond.

'Why! of course not, when it happened in America. Papa told us about it. He read it in some paper, I think. Don't you like learning things in that way?'

'No. I don't approve of irregular unsystematic knowledge.'

Dolores has heard her mother say something of this kind, and it came into her head most opportunely as a defence of her father--for she would not for the world have confessed that he did not talk to her as Sir Jasper Merrifield seemed to have done to his children. In fact she rather despised the General for so doing.

'Oh! but it is such fun picking up things out of lesson time!' said Mysie.