The day promised badly from the beginning. During breakfast a slight drizzle began to fall, and it was decided that the croquet tournament, which was now nearing its finish, had better be postponed. Then came the unfortunate affair of Palmer and Miss Johnson.
For towards midday, seeing that the rain had cleared off, and that even a flicker of wan sunshine was trying to pierce through the heavy atmosphere, Miss Johnson, having put on a waterproof and a pair of thick boots, boldly set out to take a walk. She had looked for a companion, but the girls, under Hannah’s supervision, were in the kitchen baking, while Jim had disappeared, no one knew whither. Miss Johnson set out alone.
Resolved on fresh woods, and pastures new, she bent her steps in the direction of the river. She walked by dripping trees and drenched hedges, upon which a grey mist hung in silken webs; she passed the churchyard wall; and finally, her path unexpectedly coming to an end, picked her way carefully across a ploughed field. It was at this point that, pushing through a broken fence and finding herself at last upon the river bank, an appalling sight met her eyes. It held her transfixed, but only for a moment—a moment of frozen horror: then a stifled scream came from her parted lips and she withdrew.
For what Miss Johnson had seen was a naked man. To be sure, this particular man was not very old—sixteen years or thereabouts—but to the governess’s startled vision he might have been Adam. In a few seconds she was back in the ploughed field, plunging ankle-deep in mud.
Miss Johnson was seriously angry; her morning, she decided, was spoiled; and on her return to the house she dwelt long and bitterly on the disgraceful state of things which made it impossible for her to go out for a walk without the risk of coming on such scenes. She didn’t know what the boys were thinking of—particularly Palmer—the others had at any rate been in the river. They oughtn’t to be allowed to bathe except at stated times, and certainly at no time without bathing things. Anyone might be passing at such an hour—the very middle of the day. It was in vain that Aunt Caroline assured her that nobody ever did pass, except an occasional bargee and his family; Miss Johnson was not to be pacified; and at lunch the whole matter was revived when Jim, on Palmer’s entrance, threw up his hands with a scream of dismay. Jim was sent from the table in disgrace, but this, as the governess knew, simply meant that he finished his dinner with Bridget and Hannah, by no means a great hardship, judging by the radiant face with which he returned. Jim was being spoiled; his manners had already deteriorated; and Miss Johnson resolved without further delay to send a letter to his mother.
Bang on the top of this came the matter of Daniel and the Lion’s Den. Jim invented the game, and it was played by himself and Pouncer and Johnnie, the boy who cleaned the knives and boots. Johnnie’s tearful account of it was that Master Jim had persuaded him to be Daniel, and when he had got into the den—in other words the ashpit—Pouncer had been introduced, a veritable and only too eager lion. Wilfully encouraged according to Johnnie’s version, simply in a moment of high spirits according to Jim’s, the fact remained that the lion actually had bitten Daniel. There could be no doubt of it. A triangular, flapping rent in Johnnie’s trousers was in itself sufficient proof were such required; and this time Aunt Caroline was genuinely cross. Johnnie was—with considerable difficulty and some bribery—pacified; Johnnie’s trousers were attended to by Bridget; and Jim was told that if he gave any more trouble he would be sent to bed and kept there.
He rejoined his brothers and sisters, the picture of outraged virtue. “He didn’t even bleed!” he said contemptuously. “He only got a pinch; and he yelled like a bull. He’s fifteen, too—nearly a man!”
“What else can you expect if you play with a chap like that?” asked Edward contemptuously.
“I’ll never play with him again. I offered him a shilling—it’s all I’ve got—but he went howling into the house.”
As he spoke he produced from a pocket in his knickerbockers a rather dirty handkerchief rolled up into a ball, from the middle of which he abstracted two unappetizing-looking sweets. One of these he bestowed upon Ann, the other he proceeded to suck himself.
Meanwhile the rain was coming down in torrents, and they looked out at it disconsolately, all save Grif, who, curled up on the sofa, was deep in a tattered volume of the Arabian Nights.
“What’ll we do? It’s not going to clear up; it’s getting worse.”
“Ann, please don’t breathe into my ear!” There was a querulousness in Barbara’s tone which was perhaps explained by the depressing weather, and by the fact that before dinner she had been set to practise scales, when the others were free to do as they wished.
“A fellow at school once tried to raise the devil,” said Palmer, reflectively. “He got how to do it out of some book on magic.”
Ann’s eyes grew very round. “But wasn’t that awfully wicked, Balmer?”
“Oh, he didn’t manage it. He couldn’t get the proper things.”
“What are the proper things?” asked Ann, fearfully.
“The fat of corpses, and consecrated hosts, and all that kind of stuff. You have to boil ’em into a sort of broth and smear yourself with it and dance about and say the most frightful curses and blasphemies. He tried to make the broth out of substitutes, but he didn’t succeed in raising anything except an unholy smell. There was a big row about it, too, and he was nearly expelled, besides being more or less barred afterwards by every one. You see, he made a couple of kids help him, and one of them got frightened out of his life and blabbed the whole thing:—wrote home about it. You remember, Weston?”
Edward grunted. “He was expelled. At least, his people had to take him away at the end of term.”
“I think it served him right,” said Ann gravely. “I didn’t know boys could be so wicked.”
“Oh, he was like that,” answered Palmer lightly; “he couldn’t help it. My pater, when I told him about it, said he was a morbid degenerate, and ought to be treated by a doctor.”
“And supposing the devil had come; he might have taken the whole school, and you and Edward too.... I expect that was why you all got diphtheria.”
“We hadn’t anything to do with it. It was only him and the two wretched kids he got hold of.”
“I think you ought to say your prayers pretty often, Balmer.”
“But I tell you I didn’t even know about it till it was all over.”
“Still, you were near the place where it happened.”
Ann’s voice had a suspicious break in it, and her mouth took a downward droop as she held Palmer’s hand firmly, prepared for an instant tug-of-war with any malign power which might suddenly enter to whisk him away.
“Don’t be so silly, Ann,” said Barbara, unsympathetically.
But Palmer, who divined that he had, though quite unintentionally and he knew not how, touched a hidden spring of tears, returned, unnoticed, the pressure of her hand. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s only nonsense.”
Ann’s devotion, simple and undisguised, secretly pleased him. He thought she was a jolly nice little kid.
“We might make up riddles!” Jim proposed, “and give a prize to the one who guesses most.”
“We might get Miss Johnson to finish reading her novel,” said Ann, happy once more.
Palmer shrugged his shoulders. He and Miss Johnson were not at present on good terms. “It was pretty rotten, what she did read,” he said.
“I thought it was lovely,” Barbara murmured dreamily. “But she’s lent it to Mr. Drummond. I saw her giving it to him.”
“I tell you what would be a good rag,” said Palmer. “We’ll dramatize the novel and act it.”
“You can’t dramatize it if you haven’t got it,” Edward objected.
“That doesn’t matter. We know quite enough of it. We can rig up a sort of stage in the back drawing-room, and give a performance this evening.”
“I don’t know that Miss Johnson would like it,” said Barbara, doubtfully.
“Of course she’ll like it. Why shouldn’t she?”
He sketched out a play-bill, while the others leaned over his shoulder.
This Evening at 8. Original Performance
of
BE TRUE FOND HEART
A Tragedy in Three Acts
founded on
The Celebrated Novel by Miss Johnson
Admission Free.
“I votes we charge sixpence for admission,” said Jim. “There’s a shop in the village where you can get fireworks.”
“Well, we can fix that later. We’ll have to settle who’s to take the parts first of all, and then everybody can help to write the play.”
“I’ll be Reginald,” said Barbara, her conscientious scruples yielding to the fascination of that darkly romantic hero.
But a brotherly voice replied: “Oh, rot! you can’t be. You and Ann will have to take the girls’ parts.”
Barbara’s smile faded. “I hate Angelina; she’s so stuck up and idiotic.”
“They’re all idiotic, but you can be the other girl—what’s her name.”
“Maud Vivien,” said Ann. “I’ll be Angelina, Balmer, if you’ll be Reginald.”
“Edward will be Captain Victor De Lancy,” said Palmer, drawing up the cast, “and Grif and Jim can be the old father and mother.”
“Oh, I say!” cried Jim.
“I’m afraid there’s nothing for you, Pouncer, old chap. Every one has to write his own part, so we’d better get started at once. Do you hear, Grif? Somebody waken him up.”
This was immediately accomplished by the simple method of confiscating the Arabian Nights, and Grif was told what he had to do.
“But how can we write our parts when we don’t know what the others are going to say?”
Such difficulties, for Palmer, did not exist. “You’ll have to guess. We’ll settle the acts first, and then it will be all serene.... The first act will be where Reginald has sprained his ankle, and has to lie about the house and talk to Angelina and Maud Vivien. Angelina gets jealous of Maud, and then, when Captain De Lancy comes along to see how Reginald is, she makes up to him, just to show that she doesn’t care. He, of course, falls in love with her, and is jealous of Reginald.... In the next act Reginald and Captain De Lancy have their quarrel and Reginald is shot.... The last act is where Reginald dies.”
“I don’t exactly see where Grif and me come in,” said Jim, ruefully.
“And there’s not much for Maud Vivien,” added Barbara.
“Of course there is. There’s just as much as you like to stick in. At all events we won’t have time to do it any other way if we’re going to act it to-night.”
“May we dress up, Balmer?” asked Ann softly, to whom this part of the performance was the main thing.
“Rather. I need black bags. Reginald’s always in faultless evening dress. I wonder if I could get an old pair of your grandfather’s?”
“I need them too, if I’m going to be Angelina’s father,” cried Jim. “And so will Edward for Captain De Lancy.”
“Oh, nonsense!” said Barbara. “You can’t all wear grandpapa’s trousers.”
“Not if he’s to attend the show himself,” Palmer admitted. “All the same, the father can’t come on in knickerbockers. I’ll lend Jim my Sunday things.”
“But they’re grey, and quite a light grey.”
“That doesn’t matter: all you want is longs.”
Ann, who was nothing if not practical, said, “I think we’d better go at once and ask Aunt Caroline; because if we can’t get the things to dress up in there’s no use bothering about words.”
“Right-o. But don’t say what piece we’re going to do. That’s to be a surprise. Just tell her it’s a play we’re composing ourselves.”
Ann and Barbara were dispatched on this important mission, while the four boys went down to the back drawing-room to see what could be arranged in the way of stage effects.
There were at all events curtains which could be drawn, and the first and last scenes presented little difficulty. The trouble was to prepare a wood for Reginald and Captain De Lancy to quarrel in.
“We’ll just have to put down a few plants and things here and there; and we can have a notice saying Trespassers Prosecuted. It won’t be a long act anyway. You can have Jim’s pistol.”
“I’ve used up all the caps,” said Jim.
“That’s a nuisance: we want something to make a bit of a noise.”
The scenic arrangements, though simple, occupied a considerable time, and still more was taken up by the sorting and allocation of the various garments Ann and Barbara had managed to collect. Moreover, Barbara now wished to take the part of Angelina, seeing how much more this lady was to be in the picture than the fascinating Maud Vivien. She tried persuasions first, and then more forcible methods, but Ann stoutly refused to make an exchange. In this she was backed up by her brothers, whose masculine sense of fair play was not to be overruled even by Barbara’s threat that she would withdraw altogether.
“If you don’t want to act,” said Edward, “you needn’t. Jim can do Maud Vivien, and we can cut out the father.”
All this caused delay, and when the actual composition of the drama began it was already nearly teatime; nor did it then, save in Palmer’s case perhaps, get much beyond the stage of pencil sharpening and mutual observation.
Jim, to whom all forms of literary composition were a matter of considerable physical effort, lay flat on his stomach on the carpet, a sheet of foolscap before him, upon which he traced laboriously, and with much deep breathing, certain cryptic sentences. Ann’s muse had not yet descended. With one hand toying with her pigtail, she sat sucking a pencil, while her eyes rolled from collaborator to collaborator, in helpless perplexity. Then the point of Jim’s pencil broke and he scrambled to his feet.
“How much have you done?” asked Palmer.
“Duck all. I’m going to think my part.”
As an aid to reflection he immediately enfolded Ann in the brilliant dressing-gown Reginald had elected to die in, and there was a violent struggle, accompanied by stifled screams from the entrapped heroine. Ann was rescued, and Jim was again placed on the floor, and this time sat upon. But his example proved infectious, and one by one the other authors of the piece decided to ‘think’ also.
“I’ll not show the play-bill till just before we begin,” said Palmer, who secretly shared Barbara’s idea that Miss Johnson might raise objections. This idea was strengthened at teatime, when he learned that Mr. Drummond, who had dropped in to arrange about croquet, was to be among the spectators.
It was while the spectators were at dinner that the dressing up began, but, owing to a great deal of experimentation, it was not till an imperative summons had been received from Aunt Caroline that it ended. Then the players filed downstairs to the hall, and gathered in a whispering, giggling group by the back drawing-room door.
The audience, which included Bridget, Hannah, and Pouncer, meanwhile waited patiently in the front drawing-room, and Aunt Caroline was on the point of dispatching a second and still more urgent message when a hand, unexpected as that which appeared at Belshazzar’s feast, suddenly appeared between the drawn curtains, and a programme was hurled into her face. There was a scuffling sound, as of a startled rabbit, and immediately afterwards the curtains were pulled back.
Clad in a rich ball-dress, and with a black lace mantilla draped about her shoulders, the lovely Angelina reclined gracefully upon a couch, while not far away, in equally brilliant costume, sat her bosom friend Maud Vivien. Nevertheless, these ladies did not appear to be on speaking terms, and a profound silence reigned, a silence broken at last by an angry whisper from behind the scenes: “Buck up! Say something, can’t you!”
A stifled gurgle from Angelina, whose countenance had gradually grown purple, was the only immediate response to this appeal, but presently Maud Vivien remarked, “I thought I heard some one coming in. It sounds as if he was lame. I hope there hasn’t been an accident.”
Angelina: I hope so too.
(A silence.)
Maud (sotto voce): Why don’t you come in? What are you waiting for? (Aloud, and showing great surprise:) Ah! Here they are—two strangers—gentlemen—and one of them is lame! He can hardly walk.
Maud has barely finished speaking when the two gentlemen enter. Indeed there is nothing else for them to do, though it had been understood that the introductory scene was to run to something further than three brief remarks. One of the gentlemen has red hair, the other is flaxen-polled, but in two points they closely resemble each other: both have remarkably thick black eyebrows and fierce black moustaches. Also both wear hats of clerical shape—probably the latest thing, since they are obviously not parsons, but men-about-town, and dressed with extreme fastidiousness. The red-haired gentleman limps painfully and leans upon an umbrella. Mr. Drummond, who seems to recognize this particular property, follows his progress with ill-concealed anxiety. He displays still further uneasiness as one of the hats is dropped carelessly on a chair—suggesting that it may be sat upon later, in a passage of comic relief.
First Gentleman (with winning affability): You must excuse us coming in like this, but my friend has sprained his ankle, and as we were nearer your house than any other, we just dropped in here. I am Captain Victor De Lancy, and this is my great friend Reginald Ashley. Played together on the village green and all that sort of thing—what? Allow me to introduce you, Reginald, to Miss Angelina Ravenshawe, the heiress, and Miss Maud Vivien, her friend—cousin, I mean—no, friend.
Angelina (shyly): I’m glad to see you, Balm—Reginald.
Reginald (fingering his moustache): Charmed, I’m sure! One meets so few heiresses! (He staggers and catches hold of the back of a chair; then gradually sinks down upon the curate’s hat, only to recover himself when Mr. Drummond, no longer able to restrain his emotion, utters a cry of anguish. The hat is revealed, still unharmed, as in a conjuring trick, and the curate, recognizing too late that all this is intentional and performed for his especial benefit, endeavours to look as amused as the rest of the audience.)
Captain De Lancy (under his breath, to Angelina): Ask him to sit down on the couch, stupid!
Angelina: Won’t you sit down on the couch, Balm—Reg—Mr. Ashley. I see you’ve sprained your ankle very badly indeed.
Reginald (gallantly): I don’t regret it, Miss Ravenshawe, since it has given me the pleasure of making your acquaintance.
Maud (dubiously): I’m afraid Mr. Ashley won’t be well enough to go away for a long time.
Angelina: I think so too. Will you, Mr. Ashley?
Reginald (shortly): Certainly not.
Maud: Angelina dear, you’d better call your father and mother. I know they want to meet Captain De Lancy and Mr. Ashley. They’ve seen them in church.
Reginald (seizing his chance, and addressing the audience): Not me. I never go to church—except to interrupt the service. I lead an awful life, you know—a life of cynical laughter and smouldering passion. Men have always feared, and a few women have worshipped me. Even in the cradle I was dangerous, and the nurse gave notice. I was expelled from five public schools, and ran away from my last—an industrial one. I was sent down from Oxford—permanently—in my second term. I gambled away a fortune before I was twenty. And there is that ugly story of Lady Paston, who pawned the drawing-room clock and followed me to Monte Carlo. It is only one scandal among many, and yet—and yet—(with a pathetic catch in his voice)—in a locket which I wear under my clothes, there is twisted a strand of a dead woman’s hair—my mother’s. (Bursts into tears.)
(Giggles from Angelina, and murmured commendations from Captain De Lancy:—Keep it up, old cock. Just have a squint at Miss Johnson’s face!)
Angelina (inspired): I’ll tell father and mother to bring some wine.
(Enter Mr. and Mrs. Ravenshawe. Mr. Ravenshawe wears a light grey suit, very loosely fitting, and has a couple of reefs in the hems of his trousers. Mrs. Ravenshawe apparently finds considerable difficulty in managing her skirt. There are further introductions, enlivened by Mrs. Ravenshawe’s curious movements, which suggest that she has already been sampling the wine. Finally, as she steps forward to greet the recumbent Reginald, there is a sharp continuous crepitating sound, as of many Chinese crackers going off, and she drops upon her knees. “Now you’ve done it!” remarks Captain De Lancy brutally. He assists her to rise by tugging at the scruff of her neck: and a voice from the audience questions anxiously, “Grif, dear, I hope you haven’t torn my dress? Hold it up when you walk.” Mrs. Ravenshawe follows this advice, but a portion of her clothing, semi-detached, trails ominously at her heels. Everybody sits down. The accident to Mrs. Ravenshawe appears to have checked the flow of dialogue, so that Maud Vivien’s next remark is singularly apt.)
Maud: Nobody seems to be talking very much.
Reginald (to Mrs. Ravenshawe): Your daughter has kindly asked me to stay until my ankle is well again. I hope it won’t put you to much inconvenience?
Mr. Ravenshawe (hastily replying for his wife): Rather not! We were just going to ask you ourselves, weren’t we, dear?
Mrs. Ravenshawe: Yes, Aubrey.
Captain De Lancy (glancing at his watch): It’s getting late. I must be going. I’ll roll round and see you now and then Reggie.
(Exit.)
Mr. and Mrs. Ravenshawe (with remarkable unanimity): I think we must be going too.
Maud: So do I.
(Exeunt, leaving Reginald and Angelina alone.)
Reginald (sentimentally): Time won’t lie heavy on my hands while I have you to nurse me, Miss Ravenshawe.
Angelina (giggling): Neither will it on mine.
Reginald: I feel as if I had known you for ages. So I have. I have seen you passing in your car. How lovely you looked! Unfortunately, I am a poor man, Angelina. May I call you Angelina?
Angelina: If you’ll let me call you Reginald.
Reginald: It has been the dream of my life to hear those lovely lips pronounce that name. (With deep feeling): No woman has called me Reginald since—since the last scandal. (He breaks down once more.)
Angelina (simply): Well, you’ll hear it a good deal from this on.
Reginald: I once heard it in a dream....
Angelina (wisely changing the subject): What do you think of Maud?
Reginald (unguardedly): I think she’s very beautiful.
Angelina (exhibiting unmistakable signs of jealousy): Well, I don’t, so there.
Reginald: Don’t you?
Angelina: No: and she’s not an heiress.
Reginald (significantly): Would that some one else were not.
Angelina (fluttered): Balmer, do you mean——?
Reginald (hastily): No, no: I mean nothing. I am going to sleep, I think. (Closes his eyes.)
Angelina (rising in distraction): Oh, he loves her. I see it all now. The way he looked at her. And he said he thought she was beautiful. What shall I do? I will call mamma and tell her everything. No, I won’t, though. That isn’t the way. I will never return an unrequited affection. I’ll show Reginald I don’t care. I’ll be nice to Captain De Lancy. That will show him.
(Re-enter Captain De Lancy.)
Angelina: So you’ve rolled round already! You are quick!
Captain De Lancy: I’ve forgotten my umbrella—what? Ah, here it is.
Angelina: He’s asleep. Don’t make such a row.
Captain De Lancy (amorously): I don’t want to wake him. I’d let him sleep there all day, if it gave me a chance of talking to you.
Angelina (coyly): Oh, Victor! May I call you Victor?
Captain De Lancy: Certainly. You may call me Vic, if you like. (Consults watch again.) Well, I must be going. Good-bye.
Angelina: I’ll come to the door with you.
(Exeunt together.)
Reginald (opening his eyes, and fixing the audience gloomily): They thought I was asleep, but I heard all. And better a thousand times that it should be so. Who am I to claim that pure, unstained flower of maidenhood? I who behaved disreputably at Monte Carlo, and was kicked out of the hotel for getting drunk before lunch.... Never—never.... I may be poor, but I am proud. I may have behaved like an ass, but my honour has never been tarnished.
The curtain falls amid tumultuous applause, at the end of which a clear treble voice, extremely like Mr. Ravenshawe’s, announces peremptorily, “Act two will be left out, because they won’t do it.” So the curtain rising on the third Act reveals Reginald lying in much the same position as before, except that now his couch is furnished with a pillow and an eiderdown quilt, and he himself is sick unto death, mortally wounded in that fatal quarrel. Angelina has apparently been giving, or is about to give, him his medicine. She stands beside him, a bottle and spoon in her hand.
Reginald (sitting up and clutching at his breast in agony): Hell and damnation! This pain again! (Swoons.)
Angelina: How he must suffer!
Reginald (once more reviving): Take that stuff away. I am past all first aids now. Angelina! (Deliriously, and with a frantic gesture.) Take it away!
(Angelina, alarmed, drops the bottle, which
strikes the leg of the couch and breaks.)
Angelina: Oh!
(A Voice from the audience:—“What was in it, dear? I hope it won’t leave a stain on the carpet. Bridget, you’d better go and wipe it up at once.”)
Angelina (reassuringly): It’s not ink: it’s only liquorice wine.
Mr. Ravenshawe (from the hall): I knew you’d break it, and you said you wouldn’t. You can just make me some more.
Angelina: Don’t be so greedy. It wasn’t more than half full, and you’d watered it twice.
(Enter Bridget, with a cloth and a bucket of
hot water.)
Bridget: You’ll have to get up, Master Palmer. It’s all run under the sofa.
Reginald (rising from his death-bed): Oh, dash it all, you know. That spoils the whole thing.
The other members of the company enter, and Maud Vivien says rather spitefully, “It’s Ann’s fault. She would insist on being Angelina.”
“Are we to take it that the performance is concluded?” asked the canon, getting up out of his arm-chair, “because, if so, I fancy you’d better wash before supper. We all enjoyed the play immensely.”
“Look at Edward,” giggled Ann. “His moustache has spread all over his face.”
“Oh, can’t we have supper the way we are?” cried Jim. “What’s the use of fagging about washing when we’ll have to do it over again in the morning?”
But Aunt Caroline was firm. “There must be washing. And proper washing with soap,” she added. “I’ve got my pillow-cases to consider.”
“Were we good?” asked Ann, modestly.
“Yes dear, very good. I don’t know how you made it up so well.”
“I don’t think Miss Johnson liked it,” Ann whispered. “Her face got awfully red.”
“It’s rotten that bottle breaking!” said Palmer, as, in the seclusion of the gentlemen’s dressing-room, he divested himself of Reginald’s attire. “It was in the last act that I was going to have the best rag of all—when Reginald’s dying.... Look here, Jim, you might fold up those clothes instead of chucking them all over the place!”
“I’m going to fold them if you give me time.”
“I think it’s just as well we stopped when we did,” Edward remarked. “Your language, Reginald, was beginning to get fairly sultry.”
“It was only dramatic—to express suffering.”
“It did that all right:—sounded as if you’d just taken a full-pitcher on the knee.”
“I noticed old Drumsticks looking a bit fidgety,” cried Jim, fluttering about in his shirt, pursued by Pouncer, who was bent on licking his bare legs. “Lend me that dressing-gown, Palmer. It’s not worth while putting on proper clothes just to have to take them off again in about ten minutes. Ouu!” he squealed. “Go away, Pouncer, you old rascal. Grif, call him away. He’s frightfully tickly!”
“Miss Johnson didn’t like it,” said Grif. “Perhaps we should have done something else.”
He appeared to be the only one, however, who felt pangs of uneasiness, and indeed, with the exceptions of Palmer and Edward, all had acted their parts in perfect good faith, and without the least desire to travesty Miss Johnson’s work.
“I wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t kicked up such a row this morning,” Palmer defended himself, “and everybody knows it was only a joke.”
“Oh, she’ll get over it,” said Edward, more callously. “Serves her jolly well right too!”
“I think it was rather rotten,” said Grif, “though of course we didn’t intend it to be. I never thought she’d mind, till I saw she did. I’m going to tell her I’m sorry.”
“Well, run away and tell her now,” cried Edward, angrily. “Nobody will stop you. You didn’t do much anyway, except tear Aunt Caroline’s skirt.”