Guillyford Place

3

Guillyford Place

    “You are too disagreeable, Aden!” said Lady Tarlington crossly. Perhaps it was not so surprising that Miss Felicity should not hesitate also to address her brother in such terms, having been accustomed to hear her mamma do so all her life.

    Mr Tarlington shrugged. “Very like. If being agreeable consists in staying down here at the Place to do the pretty to a bunch of brattish girls who will no doubt be as totty-headed as your youngest daughter, ma’am, I prefer to be disagreeable. Though if your purpose is to introduce them to the manners they may expect to encounter in the fashionable world, perhaps I should make a push to stay? For it would hardly do to let them loose upon the London scene in a state of perfect ignorance,” he ended sourly.

    Lady Tarlington ignored most of this speech. “At the very least, you could speak to Felicity!”

    “Er—true. What could I say, though, ma’am? We have no common ground.”

    “You may tell her she is to show the Parker girls every courtesy!” she said crossly.

    Aden Tarlington of course was aware that Mamma wished him to impress this upon Fliss. He had no expectation of its sinking into that empty yellow head, however. He was also aware that part of his mother’s annoyance with him arose out of her decision, which she apparently fancied private, that Miss Dimity Parker’s fortune would march very well with his own; his disappearing at the moment of the girl’s arrival could scarcely further this scheme.

    “Very well, I’ll speak to her,” he said in a bored voice.

    Lady Tarlington opened her mouth, thought better of it, and went out, saying only: “Kindly see that you do.”

    Mr Tarlington duly called his sister into his study. “Sit down,” he said.

    Fliss seated herself, pouting.

    “Mamma wishes me to tell you to behave decently towards these Whatsisname girls,” he said in a bored voice.

    “Dimity Parker is a horrid, mean, vain Miss, and I hate her!” she cried.

    “You mean she’s prettier than you,” said her brother drily.

    “She is NOT!”

    He shrugged. “Weil, behave nicely to her. Remember she will be a guest in our house.”

    Fliss glared.

    “That was all, l think,” he murmured vaguely.

    The wind was thoroughly taken out of Fliss’s sails—the which had been Mr Tarlington’s intention. She rose uncertainly.

    “Run along,” he said in a bored voice.

    She choked. “Do not tell me to run along! I am grown up, now!”

    “l have perceived no signs of it,” he drawled.

    Fliss made a furious noise through her teeth and flounced out of her brother’s study, slamming the door after her.

    Mr Tarlington shrugged a little. “Pity the poor Parkers,” he concluded.

    That was also Henrietta’s opinion. She had tried again to persuade Alfreda to take her place, but to no avail. A warning that she alone could not control Dimity had, however, caused her gentle sister’s brow to furrow. Henry looked at her hopefully. “Well?”

    “My love, Mamma is after all to join you once you are fixed in London,” she murmured.

    “Yes, but Lady T. wants us to stay with her at this Whatever-it-is Place! And with Dimity cooped up in the same house with Fliss Tarlington for nigh on a month—!”

    “Not quite that long, dear: Lady Tarlington writes you are to remove to the town house towards the end of April.”

    Henry groaned. “Town house!”

    “Mm,” said Miss Parker with a twinkle in her fine blue eye. “Well, of course Mamma will speak to Dimity before you leave. And she is so looking forward to her come-out: I think we might expect her to be on her best behaviour, do not you?”

    “No. She will be miffed because she hates the country and expected to go straight to London. And also because, mark my words, Fliss Tarlington will prove to have a prettier gown than hers, or some such!”

    Alfreda swallowed. There was some justice in this remark. “Well, I shall see what Mamma thinks. And no-one will blame you if Dimity does misbehave, dearest.”

    “I expect Lady T. will,” replied Henry simply.

    Alfreda had to swallow again, but said valiantly: “Not if she is a woman of sense.”

    “She cannot be a woman of sense: she wrote Mamma how much she would like to bring about a match between Dimity and this son of hers—sight unseen!” ended Henry incredulously.

    Alfreda had to smile. “Very true. But mammas are apt to make such plans for their children, Henry. It is quite normal.”

    “Quite normal? If Mamma’s arithmetic is correct, he is old!” cried Henry.

    To Henry thirty-four or -five was no doubt terribly ancient, yes. Miss Parker did not look upon the matter in quite the same light. But she merely replied: “I dare say Dimity will take him in aversion, in any case. I shall speak to Mamma on your behalf, but don’t hope too much.”

    “I’m not hoping anything at all,” replied Henry, relapsing into gloom.

    This pessimism was justified: Mrs Parker did not see what she could well do; and she was sure Alfreda must see that, if Henry was as yet too immature to realise it, she must be allowed to have her chance when it was given her. However, she could write Lady Tarlington a note advising her that Dimity could be a handful, if Alfreda thought it proper.

    Alfreda hesitated. Then she said: “Well, frankly, Mamma, she is not launching the girls out of the kindness of her heart, but for the substantial remuneration my uncle promised her. I am tempted to say, let her stew in her own juice!”

    “Dearest!” she protested.

    Miss Parker’s fine blue eye twinkled a little but she owned: “No, well, given that Dimity can be very wilful, I think we should warn her, Mamma.”

    “In that case, my love, you had best lend me your aid. For I confess,” said Mrs Parker, biting her lip but also laughing a little, “that l am at a loss as to just how to phrase such a letter!”

    Alfreda smiled and lent her mamma her willing cooperation.

    “This is impossible!” cried Lady Tarlington on receipt of the missive.

    “Give it here,” returned her son. He wrenched it out of her hand without waiting for her permission. “Brattish: said I not so?” he concluded.

    “Yes, but— I wish l had never—” She broke off: she had not revealed to Aden that it was not the goodness of her heart which had caused her to make the offer to bring the Parker girls out. Any more than she had revealed to him that the series of young ladies whom she had had in her house as companions to her daughters during the years he had been away with the Army had also been launched upon the world for a consideration. Well, one had to dress! And with poor Sir Gerry’s affairs in such disarray— Sir Gerald’s affairs were of course no longer in this disarray, but her Ladyship had begun to chafe under the iron grip her son kept upon the family purse-strings. It would be more than pleasant to have some decent pin-money to come and go on, and what Aden did not know could not possibly harm him!

    “Serves you right for offerin’,” he drawled.

    “That is no help! And Fliss is such a handful!” Lady Tarlington produced a lace-edged handkerchief and applied it artistically to her eyes—which had, indeed, begun to ooze tears.

    As Aden was aware his mamma could cry to order he was not affected by this display. But as he was very sick of the entire subject he said briskly: “Well, get someone in to help you control the brats, ma’am. Perhaps someone from Miss Blake’s?”

    “Fliss hates them all,” she reported mournfully.

    “Well, mayhap there is an elder sister or some such female that Mrs Parker could recommend? –Do we call her cousin, by the way?”

    “What? For Heaven’s sake, Aden, can it signify?”

    He shrugged. “What was her name? Is she a Gratton-Gordon?”

    “No!” replied the former Miss Gratton-Gordon indignantly. “And nor is her husband, he is some sort of a second cousin, on Mamma’s side. Um—well, Mrs Parker’s first name is Venetia, I do remember that, for it is rather unusual and pretty. I think she was a Miss... Something Scottish. Ogilby? No: Ogilvie.”

    “Mrs Parker was a Miss Ogilvie?” he said, staring.

    “Yes!” said his mother impatiently.

    “But— There is a Miss Ogilvie at Fliss’s school: the oddest little creature.”

    Lady Tarlington shrugged. “What can it signify? They are certainly not relations of ours!”

    “Mamma, if you did not live in a world of your own, you would realize that it was this Miss Ogilvie who saved Noël Amory’s life at sea not a week since!” he said in considerable annoyance.

    She shrugged. “A schoolmarm who sails around in a fishing boat like a man?”

    “She is not in the least like a man,” he replied drily. “Intrepid—yes. Mannish—no.”

    His mother stared. “What can you— Aden! Surely you do not affect the creature?”

    He eyed her drily. “You are right, ma’am, I do not.”

    His mother’s jaw dropped. “Sir Noël could not— He would not!”

    Sir Noël Amory had most certainly not seemed indifferent to the intrepid Miss Ogilvie, after his recent misadventure in a sailing dinghy. She had not, in fact, rescued him alone: she had been in a boat with an elderly fisherman and a lad. But she had certainly cooperated fully in the rescue, to hear him tell it. And which had made the greater impression on the worldly and sophisticated Noël Amory, the big brown eyes, the pink cheeks and the curls, or the intrepidity, would have been very hard to say.

    Pansy had settled in well at Miss Blake’s, but the restricted life of the school chafed her somewhat, and it was with delight that during her free time she had discovered an elderly Mr Dawson, a retired fisherman living at the nearby Sandy Bay, who was only too pleased to take her out in his little boat. She had eagerly absorbed everything the old man cared to teach her, and it had not been long before he was letting her take the tiller and, at least in calmer weather, sail the little vessel around the bay. On longer trips, such as round the dangerous Guillyford Point with its vicious rocks lurking just under the surface, he would not, of course, permit her to take charge; nevertheless he allowed that she were quite handy in a small boat and, with a quick glare at his young grandson Matt, who generally accompanied him, being deemed too young to go out with the fishing fleet, that at least liddle Missy listened, and did what she was told! It had been on one of these trips round the Point into Guillyford Bay that the three of them had encountered the vainglorious Sir Noël, in a hired boat. The baronet was quite a competent sailor, but he had sailed too close in to the Point in a choppy sea.

    Sir Noël had suffered no ills from his misadventure, and insisted on calling at the school with a bunch of flowers and his thanks before he left Guillyford Place for his home in Devon. Aden had gone along with him out of sheer curiosity. His friend had been unable to take his eyes off little, plump, curly-haired Miss Ogilvie. She had not, in Aden’s considered opinion, seemed precisely overwhelmed by her sophisticated caller, but he had kindly not said so to Noël.

    “For God’s sake, Mamma, the girl saved his life: that might be supposed to predispose him in her favour!” he said acidly.

    Lady Tarlington had long since conceived an ambition to marry Fliss off to Sir Noël Amory: the baronet was well-born, well off and handsome—the first two points counting, alas, very much more than the last. Her thin face was now very flushed. “It is unheard of! The Amorys are a very old and well thought of family. Dr Ogilvie was a mere nobody! And the Parkers themselves, though respectable, are the most minor of country gentlefolk. Alfred Parker would not have had a penny to bless himself with, had he not married that cit!”

    “Most explicit, ma’am,” he noted drily.

    “It’s true!” she cried. “The Ogilvies are nobodies!”

    “However true it is, it will not persuade me to urge Noël to look favourably on my idiotish sister,” he returned cordially. “I am sorry to dash your hopes, ma’am.”

    “You are not sorry at all: you are glad!”

    “Er—well, I must admit I would not wish Fliss onto any friend of mine, Mamma. She is a poorly-disciplined, selfish brat, and I should be very sorry to see a decent man like Amory leg-shackled to her.”

    “How can you say such a thing of your own sister?” She dabbed at her eyes.

    Very, very easily. Aden said only: “Ain’t there a spinster sister who could look to this Parker brat?”

    His mother blew her nose crossly. “What? Oh: yes, I think there is an unmarried sister: they are a numerous family. Very well, I shall invite her. And Aden,” she said as her son went over to the door of the little morning-room: “since you intend to accompany Sir Noël to his home in Devon anyway, could you not escort the Parker girls—”

    “No,” he said, walking out.

    Lady Tarlington had expected as much. Nevertheless she sobbed angrily into her handkerchief for some time. Aden was so disobliging!

    Mrs Parker had not expected the outcome of her letter to be an invitation to her eldest daughter to become companion to the three girls. Nevertheless she was not  displeased by it.

    Dimity pointed out scornfully that there was no point to it: as Alfreda would have nothing to wear, she would not attract the favourable notice of any gentleman, and in any case Lady T. would not take her to the really smart parties. Henry retorted that she was merely jealous because Alfreda was prettier than she was; which of course immediately raised a scream of “That is NOT TRUE!”

    It was not quite true, no. The oldest Parker sister was a good-looking young woman but Dimity was quite spectacularly pretty. As has already been noted, Alfreda was one of the dark Parkers. Her hair did not riot so thickly as Henry’s but lay closer to her head in heavy waves. Her eyes were the same dark lapis shade, however, and her face was oval with a very sweet expression. For some time it had been a cause of considerable anguish to her mamma that Alfreda had not been able to have a proper come-out. She had been to the little assemblies of Upper Beighnham, but there were few eligible young gentlemen in the neighbourhood; indeed, at one stage Mrs Parker had feared that Alfreda had attracted the notice of a most ineligible parti indeed: a Mr Sneed, the son of the mayor of Upper Beighnham. Mr Sneed, Senior, was no doubt a worthy man, in his way, but—! Apart from young Mr Sneed and his ilk, there was only Mr Babbington. So Mrs Parker was very pleased to learn that Alfreda would have an opportunity to broaden her circle of acquaintance. And thought that something might be contrived over her gowns.

    Exactly how Mrs Parker contrived, the Vicar at least never knew. Though he was aware that some unpacking of trunks in the attic and cutting up of Mrs Parker’s carefully laid-by silks took place. But it was true that the new stove that Cook had been promised for an age did not eventuate this year after all. Alfreda was a little horrified at the sum her mamma pressed into her hand, but Mrs Parker assured her that she would need every last penny of it: London was so expensive!

    And at last they were off: Henry grim and silent, Alfreda a little pale and nervous but rather excited, and Dimity, even though their immediate destination was only Guillyford Place and not London, aux anges. They were not travelling post at the late Alfred Parker’s expense, as had been intended: Lady Tarlington had sent her own carriage! The courtesy was due entirely to her Ladyship’s plans for the ultimate disposition of Dimity’s fortune (and incidentally Dimity herself) but, if a suspicion that it might be so crossed the Reverend Simeon Parker’s mind, the three girls at least were blissfully free from any such arrière pensée.

    Rapidly Lady Tarlington, with the merest glance cast over the garments laid out on the three young ladies’ beds for her inspection, decided they were all impossible. Rapidly she decided that, although of course the Brighton modistes were nothing compared to the London ones, a quick trip into the town might not be ineligible. What? Yes, Alfreda too, of course! They must at least have a modish pelisse each in which to travel to London. And that schoolgirlish bonnet of Henrietta’s was quite ineligible—quite!

    Alfreda’s mamma had hastily had the local dressmaker make her a new pelisse for the journey, and she refused quietly but firmly to countenance any such notion in her own case. But she would be happy to accompany the girls and assist Lady Tarlington in the choice of stuffs for Dimity and Henry. Dimity cried out at this, declaring that Alfreda’s taste was dowdy and old-fashioned and that she would dress her like a schoolgirl; and Lady Tarlington, who was accustomed to hear very much the same sort of thing from Felicity, mentally thanked Providence that they had decided upon inviting Alfreda, and accepted the offer of her company with alacrity. The more so as she could see for herself that Alfreda, if the pelisse was not quite up to London standards, was an elegant young woman of great propriety of manner.

    It proved a wise decision: Alfreda was able to prevent Dimity from buying a startlingly blue satin bonnet with an huge upstanding poke and three giant ostrich plumes, Fliss from choosing a similar monstrosity in sea-green, with a sort of fan of stiffened lace as well as plumes, and to convince Henry that Lady Tarlington’s choice of a scarlet woollen fabric for her new pelisse would not be ineligible. Nor too expensive. These were not, by any means, the only sartorial crises of the day, but they were certainly the ones with which Lady Tarlington would have found it hardest to cope alone, so she was very well satisfied with her decisions both to invite Alfreda to be the girls’ companion and to bring her along on this specific expedition. And made a mental note that more minor (and much more boring) expeditions in search of items such as stockings and gloves might safely be superintended by Miss Parker in the future.

    In spite of the success of the shopping expedition, neither Miss Parker nor her Ladyship succeeded in prevailing upon Felicity to agree that, as her guests intentioned paying a courtesy call on their cousins the Miss Ogilvies at Miss Blake’s school, it would be only polite for her to accompany them. When it was clear that she was not to be convinced, her mamma decided grimly that the Miss Parkers might have the carriage. And Felicity need not look for any amusement that day, at her home!

    It was no consolation at all to the pouting Fliss that in the end Dimity did not go, either: she had twisted her ankle slightly and with the London dances coming up, Lady Tarlington decreed she must keep off it absolutely until it should be quite well again. Dimity had not wished either to set eyes on Miss Blake again or to meet the Ogilvie relations: she was perfectly happy to remain in her bed with a large box of sweetmeats and a pile of back numbers of La Belle Assemblée. Even if they were a little out of date they would give one some good ideas!

    “Good ideas as to tricking herself out in diamond-studded breastplates,” noted Henry as the carriage set off.

    “Something of that sort, yes!” agreed Alfreda with a gurgle of laughter. “Many of the ideas in those journals are of that sort!”

    “It’s a pity she’s got so much pin-money,” decided Henry. “It encourages her to indulge her lack of taste.”

    “Well, yes! Only do not say so in front of our relatives, my love.”

    “What? Oh: you mean Lady T. and Fliss? No, very well. –Mr T. and Sir G. are well out of it, are they not?”

    Alfreda nodded, smiling, though a trifle guiltily: Mr Tarlington had apparently fled to London and his papa to Bath to take the waters. And it was not to wondered at, with all the fuss and flurry over gowns for London that was at present going on in their house. Or rather, Sir Gerald’s house: it appeared that Mr T. had inherited a place from his old cousin, in another part of the country. Henry had privately expressed the opinion to her sister that if she had a mamma like Lady T. and a sister like Fliss in residence at Guillyford Place, she’d spend most of her time at this other country place; Alfreda, though she knew she ought not, had had to agree with her.

    Henry, of course, had no idea at all that “Mr T.” was the gentleman whose horse she had slaughtered and who had so summarily put her over his knee on the road to Upper Beighnham; and Mr Tarlington had not made the connection between his mamma’s distant relatives and the false lad of that encounter. Or else he might possibly have made a push to stay at Guillyford Place and see if one of these Parker girls might be his young footpad. On the other hand, he might not: it was true he had found the memory of her big blue eyes and defiant little face coming back to him more than once over the intervening months, but he had irritably shrugged it off as a stupid fancy. Very likely the girl had been no more than sixteen, if that. And a complete hoyden, and the child of some obscure country vicar. And in any case the whole idea was absurd. –Mr Tarlington did not define to himself what he meant by “the whole idea.”

    “I wonder what these Ogilvie cousins will be like,” said Henry, after some staring out of the carriage window.

    “Odd, if they are like their father,” said Alfreda unguardedly. “He quarrelled bitterly with Papa over some question to do with the Trinity, I believe.”

    “I can’t imagine Papa quarrelling bitterly with anyone, Alfreda!”

    Alfreda’s placid blue eyes twinkled. “Well, exactly, my love: that is what convinces me that Uncle Quentin must have been exceeding odd: to take umbrage at anything Papa could have said and to remain in it for the next twenty years—!”

    “Yes, indeed. Well, if Lady T.’s peculiar story about one of them sailing a boat and fishing that friend of Mr T.’s out of the sea was anything like accurate, they will certainly be unusual,” said Henry on a hopeful note.

    Alfreda smiled a little. “Yes; I am looking forward to meeting them, Henry!”

    Henry grinned. “Well, I hate paying duty calls, but actually I wouldn’t mind meeting them, either. And I’d like to see Miss Blake again: I miss having someone intelligent to talk to.”

    There was a short silence.

    “Sorry!” gasped Henry.

    Alfreda squeezed her hand. “That’s all right, dearest: I know you meant nothing by it. And I know none of us except Papa and Theo are as bright as you. But you could always talk to Papa about anything at all, you know.”

    “Yes, I know. Only he’s so very good,” said Henry with a sigh.

    Alfreda did not reprove her for this rather improper note of regret: she merely nodded understandingly.

    After a few moments Henry said: “Hasn’t one of them an odd name? Which is which?”

    “Of our Ogilvie cousins? Well, I do remember that, for when Theo and I were little Mamma and Papa used to make a great joke of it: thinking of all the awful geographical appellations they might bestow on you younger ones, you know!” she said with a laugh. “Uncle Quentin chose the elder girl’s name: she is Philadelphia.”

    “That’s bad,” said Henry dispassionately. “On the other hand, ‘Alfreda’ and ‘Henrietta’ are not too inspired, either. And in my case it didn’t answer: Great-Uncle Henry left everything to that other old uncle of Mamma’s, the one who lives in Oxford. –So it’s the younger girl who was landed with ‘Pansy’, is it?”

    “Yes. Papa was used to say that after ‘Philadelphia’ his bet would have been ‘Constantinople’ at the very least!” she choked.

    “‘Constantinople Ogilvie,’” said Henry thoughtfully. “Yes, that is bad! But ‘Pansy’ is fairly dreadful, too, Alfreda.”

    Her sister smiled. “‘Daffodil’ would be worse, my love.”

    Henry choked ecstatically, and a great part of the rest of the drive was spent fin dreaming up ever worsening geographical or floral names that might have been awarded the Miss Ogilvies.

    They had chosen a Saturday for their call, as Henry knew that Miss Blake’s did not have afternoon school that day, and it was more likely that both Miss Blake and the cousins would be available to receive them; and so it proved. Miss Blake, Miss Worrington and Miss Ogilvie were all in Miss Blake’s sitting-room when the carriage arrived. Miss Blake and Miss Worrington expressed genuine pleasure at seeing Henrietta again, and it was plain to Alfreda from the way her sister’s face lit up that she was delighted to see her former teachers.

    Alfreda was a little surprized to find Miss Ogilvie so young-looking, as she knew her to be almost her own age, but of course greeted her politely, expressing her pleasure at meeting her cousin at last.

    Pansy was shaking in her shoes. It had been bad enough imagining what Fliss Tarlington might be letting out to the Parker cousins, but having them actually call—! Suddenly the masquerade did not seem an adventure at all, but, in Miss Blake’s orderly little room in the company of the level-headed headmistress herself, only a stupid schoolgirls’ prank.

    “How do you do, Cousin Alfreda?” she said in a hollow voice.

    “And this is Henrietta, of course,” smiled Alfreda.

    Henry beamed at her. “How do you do, Cousin! I’ve been so eager to meet you: we’ve heard about your bravery in rescuing Mr Tarlington’s friend from a watery grave!”

    Miss Blake had perforce had to be apprised of this event, in the wake of Sir Noël’s call, and although she had been surprized to learn how Pansy had been spending her leisure hours, she had not forbidden her to go sailing with the local fisherfolk again. Though she had made her promise not to take any of the girls out, or indeed discuss the adventure with them. Pansy had promised happily: she didn’t wish for their company in any case. So Miss Blake and Miss Worrington did not evince any surprise at Miss Henrietta Parker’s remark, just smiled and nodded, as the quailing Pansy dredged up a weak smile in response to her cousin’s greeting.

    Miss Blake chatted for only a few moments before remarking that she was sure the cousins would wish to be alone for a little, and rising to depart with Miss Worrington, telling Miss Ogilvie as they went that she would see that her sister was sent along directly.

    Pansy, as the door closed after them, could nigh have fainted with relief: the dread word “Delphie” had not been uttered. She began to think that perhaps they might get through this terrible encounter unscathed, after all.

    Miss Parker had only time to express their sympathy for the sad death of her cousins’ papa and to convey mamma’s good wishes, when the door opened to admit Delphie. Smiling, Alfreda rose. “Cousin Pansy! How very nice to meet you at last!”

    Limply Delphie greeted both her cousins, barely able to raise a smile. Limply she sank onto a sofa.

    Alfreda naturally assumed that the younger cousin must be very shy. She thought it might be best to let her recover herself, and so chatted on cheerfully to Miss Ogilvie, not neglecting to address her politely several times as “Cousin Philadelphia.” Pansy’s stilted replies she also put down to a certain shyness, or at least a social awkwardness. Reflecting that she was not unlike Henry: her sister was also physically fearless but socially clumsy. Henry, indeed, was not bearing much of the burden of the conversation.

    If Miss Blake had not assured Delphie as she dispatched her to the sitting-room that she and Miss Worrington would return a little later to take tea with the cousins, perhaps she would have held out. But as Miss Parker addressed Pansy as “Cousin Philadelphia” for the fourth time her nerves gave way, and she gasped: “Don’t!” and burst into tears.

    Very red, but also grinding her teeth, the gruff seaman sprang to her feet. “She’s just—um—a little overwrought,” she said, sitting down beside Delphie and putting an arm round her. “Don’t cry, Pansy,” she said grimly. “It’ll be all right.”

    “No!” sobbed Delphie helplessly. “I can’t! Stop it, Pansy!”

    The Parker sisters had been very startled to see their cousin suddenly burst into tears; at this, however, they were extremely taken aback indeed and exchanged astonished glances.

    After a moment Alfreda said in a bewildered voice: “What is it? If—if it’s that I have confused your names, I—I’m sure I beg your pardons—”

    “Don’t be an idiot,” said Henry, now extremely interested as well as astonished. “It can’t be that.”

    “No! Of course not, Cousin!” gulped Delphie. “We’ve been so stupid!”

    “There is no need to go into that now,” said Pansy grimly, still hoping to save the day.

    Delphie gulped and sniffed, and looked at her plaintively. “Miss Blake’s coming back.” She gave a rending sniff. “For tea.”

    “So I had imagined,” said Pansy in a hard voice.

    “They’ll do it in front of her!” wailed Delphie, suddenly collapsing in a fresh burst of sobs on her sister’s shoulder.

    Pansy took a deep breath. “The odds appear to be in favour of it, yes. Stop crying, Delphie; I’ll tell them.”

    Delphie didn’t precisely stop but she did try to restrain her sobs.

    Grimly Pansy said their cousins: “She’s Philadelphia, not me.”

    “I do beg your pardon; we were so sure that Philadelphia was the elder,” said Alfreda limply.

    “I collect you imagined all those joking conversations with Mamma and Papa,” noted Henry drily.

    “Dearest—” protested Alfreda faintly.

    Pansy merely replied: “About our awful names?”

    Henry nodded. “Yes.”

    “Yes. Well, you were right, Delphie is Miss Ogilvie. I’m Pansy.”

    There was a short silence.

    “Bu-but... We had the impression,” said Alfreda weakly, “that—that the younger sister was—”

    “—in statu pupillari,” finished Henry.

    “That is perfectly correct,” agreed Pansy. “It was supposed to be me, but Miss Blake wanted a teacher who could take mathematics and geography, and Delphie’s hopeless at them.”

    “Ye-es...” said Alfreda uncertainly. “But—forgive me if I have it wrong, but l had understood that we were almost the same age, dear Cousin Philadelphia?”

    Delphie blew her nose. “Yes. Pray call me Delphie,” she added.

    “Of course; Delphie,” said Alfreda numbly, looking from one to the other of her cousins in patent bewilderment.

    Suddenly Henry gave a shout of laughter. “I have it! It’s a substitution, isn’t it? Oh, how splendid!”

    “Yes,” said Pansy baldly.

    Delphie blew her nose again. “Yes,” she  agreed miserably.

    Henry laughed helplessly. Poor Miss Parker merely looked stunned.

    “What you must think of us, Cousin Alfreda—” began Delphie miserably.

    “What does that matter?” said Pansy, scowling horribly. “What matters is that they mustn’t give us away! –You won’t, will you?” she demanded of them.

    “No, of course not!” replied Henry, grinning. “Anyone who can put one over on O.B. for more than a whole term has my vote!”

    “I—I don’t think I quite understand,” faltered Alfreda.

    “It was like this,” said Pansy with a sigh. “You see—” She explained fully.

    Alfreda listened numbly. At the end of it she said weakly: “But why did Cousin Delphie have to pretend to be the younger?”

    “In order to be fed and housed for the year,” said Pansy grimly.

    “But my dears, you could have come to us!” she gasped. “Why on earth did you not write Mamma?”

    “Don’t be silly. How could your family afford to support an extra mouth?” returned Pansy briskly. “And in the event, it would have been two extra mouths: I don’t believe for a moment believe that Miss Blake would have taken me on had she known my age—though I am fully qualified,” she ended, scowling.

    “Yes: and indeed, she is doing splendidly,” quavered Delphie.

    Alfreda swallowed. “l am sure.”

    Henry was shaking with laughter again. “Priceless!” she gasped.

    “So you won’t give us away, will you?” said Pansy on a hopeful note, seeing that Cousin Alfreda, though very obviously shocked, was not looking precisely outraged.

    “Never!” gasped Henry. “Alfreda, you couldn’t be so unsporting!”

    “Dearest, that expression—! No, well, of course I shall not breathe a word... But Cousin,” she said to Delphie: “had you—had you reflected that—that such a—a masquerade is—is really, quite ineligible?”

    “We’re truly not doing anyone any harm,” Pansy assured her anxiously.

    “No, I see that. But all the same...”

    “I did have doubts,” said Delphie, blushing very much.

    “A proper young woman—Elinor Dashwood, for example,” said Pansy deeply, “would not have behaved so. However, I suppose we’re not particularly proper. And the alternative was to live with horrid old Great-Uncle Humphrey.”

    Henry immediately expressed interest and Pansy revealed the full horrors of Great-Uncle Humphrey’s house. The Parkers agreed their cousins could not possibly have supported that; but Alfreda again wondered that they had not cared to contact her mamma.

    “Hush: we’ve been through all that,” said Henry, grinning.

    “Yes,” agreed Pansy in some relief. The two eyed each other with interest.

    By the time Miss Blake and Miss Worrington returned, closely followed by Pointer with the tea-tray, Pansy and Henry were deep in sailing talk and Delphie was listening interestedly to Alfreda’s comfortable account of the little ones at home and their doings.

    The Parkers did not stay long after the tea: Alfreda was on edge lest her tongue betray her and she address one of her cousins by the wrong name. She did not, in fact, address either as anything but “Cousin” for the remainder of the visit, but it must be admitted that it was only her uneasy conscience that made her suppose that Miss Blake must notice something odd in this.

    “Well!” said Henry with a chuckle when they were safely in the carriage once more.

    Alfreda gulped.

    “Don’t you dare to write Mamma of this!” Henry ordered fiercely.

    “She—she would not betray them, dearest,” she faltered.

    “Gudgeon! She would inevitably show the letter to Papa, and I am quite sure he would feel it his duty to apprise Miss Blake of the situation,” said Henry grimly.

    “Oh, dear: you are right, of course. Well, I shall not. It is not so very bad, after all.”

    “Completely harmless,” said Henry on a firm note.

    “Ye-es... Well, yes, it is.”

    “Of course it is, Alfreda! Given that Pansy is clearly expert in the subjects Miss Blake desires her to teach! By the way, she was saying she would like to learn navigation: did you hear?”

    Alfreda nodded. It had appeared to her, though she had understood less than one word in ten of what Pansy had actually said on the topic, that their cousin had a fair grasp of the subject already. Certainly her description of the rocks and currents around the notorious Guillyford Point, which had caused Mr T.’s friend to come to grief, had been exceeding nautical.

    “It made me feel pretty stupid, I can tell you,” said Henry thoughtfully.

    “My love, you are not stupid at all! Why, you are the cleverest of us all!” cried Alfreda, forgetting the polite fiction that as the eldest brother, and in Holy Orders to boot, Theo must be even brighter than his little sister.

    “The fact that I can read a paragraph in the Morning Post without either yawning or becoming distracted,” said Henry, scowling horribly, “does not put me in the same class as Pansy, I can tell you!”

    “Well, no, but then would you truly desire to be a mathematician?” returned Alfreda. A twinkle appeared in her soft lapis eye: she added: “And ‘distracted’ in which sense, my love?”

    “What? Oh!” said Henry with a choke of laughter. ‘‘Both, of course! And I suppose you’re right: I’ve always found mathematics very boring.”

    Alfreda nodded. After a moment she ventured: “Cousin Delphie seems so pleasant, do you not think?”

    “Yes. Lacking in decision, however. l must admit I would like to get to know Pansy better,” she said on a wistful note.”

    “Yes. It is a pity we must leave Guillyford Place so soon. –I suppose,” added Miss Parker with a sigh, “they have not given very much thought to what will become of them beyond the end of this year.”

    “Won’t Pansy stay on at Miss Blake’s?”

    Alfreda frowned. “Ye-es... But what is to become of Delphie? She can hardly maintain the fiction that she is a girl of seventeen!”

    “Eighteen, by then.”

    “Henry!” she said crossly.

    “Um—no. Sorry. But I don’t see that it can make any difference,” said Henry blankly.

    Alfreda sighed. “I think she must come to us.”

    “Yes. –No, wait: then it will come out!” she cried.

    “Well, yes. For even if Delphie were capable of lying to Mamma and Papa, which I do not believe for an instant, I for one should feel myself obliged to reveal the fiction,” said Alfreda firmly.

    Henry pulled a ferocious face but admitted: “Yes.”

    Alfreda sighed.

    After a moment Henry ventured: “It need not affect Pansy.”

    Her sister gave her a dry look. “Not if you are capable of preventing Papa from apprising Miss Blake of the whole: no.”

    Henry made another face and admitted: “Not I! Not when he has the bit of duty between his teeth!”

    Alfreda, of course, also had a strong conception of where her duty lay: and in this instance very naturally she could not but feel it lay not in the direction of a misguided loyalty to her young cousins but in instantly apprising her parents of the situation. She sighed, and said nothing.

    “We mustn’t tell Dimity,” ventured Henry after a quantity of damp countryside had passed by the carriage windows, unnoticed by either sister.

    “Good gracious, no!” she cried unguardedly.

    Henry gave a sigh of relief. That must obviously mean that however reluctant she might be to do so, Alfreda was ready to maintain the fiction. “No,” she agreed, smiling at her.

    Miss Parker smiled weakly in return but conceded: “No, indeed.”

    “And did you have a pleasant visit?” enquired Lady Tarlington graciously on the girls’ return.

    “Indeed, your Ladyship,” lied Alfreda gamely.

    “Our cousins are such pleasant girls,” said Henry with a naughty twinkle in her eye. “Miss Ogilvie, indeed, is quite the mathematician.”

    “She is a horrid bluestocking,” interpolated Fliss, pouting. “The girls said that one could not understand a word of her lessons, last term!”

    “She is certainly most learned, indeed,” agreed Alfreda, hoping to restore harmony. Not to say end the conversation.

    “And also very pretty,” added Henry with this time a glint rather than a twinkle in her eye.

    “Pretty?” cried Fliss scornfully. “She is no such thing! Why, she wears eyeglasses!”

    “Pretty?” said Lady Tarlington on a sharp note.

    “I found them both very pretty,” admitted Alfreda. “Miss Ogilvie is perhaps the more animated in manner. They—they have both brown curls—”

    “And Pansy has big brown eyes and pink cheeks,” said Henry, eyeing the pouting Felicity drily, “and Delphie, who has lighter coloured hair, has big grey eyes and the sweetest expression you ever saw.”

    “Indeed,” agreed Alfreda, smiling.

    Fliss shrugged. “I dare say she may be sweet. Certainly all the little girls thought she was something marvellous, it that counts for anything! But she has no countenance whatsoever!”

    Lady Tarlington ignored that. “It is Pansy who is the elder, is it, Alfreda?”

    Alfreda gulped, and croaked out an affirmative answer.

    “Yes, and she is not pretty, Mamma!” contributed Fliss, pouting again. “I do not care if the fashion be for dark hair: she dresses like a frump, and no gentleman would look twice at her!”

    “Be silent,” said Lady Tarlington grimly. A gentleman’s looking twice at Miss Ogilvie was of course precisely what she was afraid of. Or, rather, of two specific gentlemen’s doing so: Sir Noël Amory, whom she still had very much in mind for Fliss (having ignored her son’s remarks on the matter), and Aden himself, who had appeared to her to have betrayed rather too much interest in the intrepid Miss Ogilvie. She took a deep breath. “I dare say you will like to have your cousins to tea one day soon, my dear, and you may write them a little note to invite them,” she said to Alfreda.

    Very startled at this unlooked for piece of generosity on her Ladyship’s part, Alfreda murmured thanks.

    “And directly after that we really must make a push to be off to London,” she declared. “For even though the Season will not nearly have begun, there is just so much to see to; you girls have barely a stitch that is fit to be seen in!”

    Fliss laughed and clapped her hands and danced a little.

    “Yes, well, I had intended staying at the Place for a little longer, and perhaps holding one or two small parties, just in order to accustom you girls to going into company a little,” continued Lady Tarlington on an airy note which none of the girls remarked did not ring true: “but what with muslins and so forth to choose—and the Brighton milliners are too impossibly dowdy! No, we must leave as soon as may be. And I dare say,” she said kindly to the Parkers, “that you will be able to see more of your cousins at some other time. Does not the school have a summer vacation?”

    “Mamma!” cried Fliss crossly. “You know it does! And if that means we are to be fixed at horrid Guillyford for the entire summer, it is too bad! The drive into Brighton takes hours, and we shall miss out on everything!”

    “Rubbish, child. And in any case I am determined that this summer Aden shall hire a house in Brighton for us. Now, run along, Mamma has letters to write.”

    The Parkers bobbed, smiled, and withdrew most properly; Fliss tossed her head at being thus summarily dismissed, but ran upstairs happily enough to be the first to acquaint Dimity with the latest news.

    Lady Tarlington did have some correspondence, but she did not immediately turn to it. Instead she walked over to the window and looked out unseeingly, frowning. Aden had accompanied Sir Noël to his home in Devon, as he had said he would, and then had gone up to London. Not to the Tarlingtons’ town house but to the house which had once been old Cousin Jeremiah Aden’s. Her Ladyship had, however. written him a stream of instructions with regard to the family house, which—although she would have liked to—they did not keep fully staffed when they were not in the metropolis. Aden had written a note back to say he was not interested in seeking out chimney sweeps and had passed the letter to the housekeeper. And that in any case Mamma would probably see him again soon: London was exceeding flat and there was business on the estate that needed looking to. And if it suited Mamma, Noël would come up from Devon to join him at the Place and they could all go on to town together—since she was apparently afraid of encountering highwaymen on the road between Brighton and London.

    This last hit had been a typical piece of Aden’s nonsense and Lady Tarlington had done her best to ignore the annoyance it had immediately raised in her bosom. All she had earlier said to him was that a party of ladies should not travel unescorted and that Aden should not need her prompting to recognize his duty—but then, that was Aden all over: if he could disoblige, he would! She stared out at the lawns, frowning. No: neither Aden nor Sir Noël would be given the chance to encounter this Miss Ogilvie again, if she could help it! And she would not run the slightest risk of allowing Aden to use the presence of the Miss Parkers as an excuse to urge her to invite the Ogilvie creature to dine. She would get the girls away from Guillyford Place well before Aden was due to come down!

    The Ogilvies did not manage to have private speech together until bedtime. At which point Pansy threw herself onto the bed with a groan. “This afternoon must rank as the worst of my entire existence!”

    Delphie sat down limply beside her. “Yes.”

    “Well, at least they will not betray us!” added Pansy on a bracing note.

    “No,” she said dully.

    Pansy looked at her anxiously. A tear trickled down Delphie’s oval cheek and she wiped it away surreptitiously with the back of her hand.

    “You—you aren’t losing your nerve, are you, Delphie?”

    “Not exactly,” said Delphie faintly. “Only I wish we had not done it.”

    “We had to,” growled the sturdy seaman, scowling.

    “I—I suppose we should have written to Aunt Venetia,” she faltered.

    “No! What would Papa have said? Two able-bodied young women taking the bread out of the mouths of their little cousins for the sake of a meaningless social proscription?”

    “Ye-e… Only, it is so improper,” said Delphie faintly.

    “Balderdash,” said the sea-captain grimly. “Imposing a financial burden which they are unfitted to bear on poor Aunt Venetia and Uncle Simeon would have been improper, if you like!”

    “Ye-es... Then we should have gone to Great-Uncle Humphrey!” she gulped, bursting into tears.

    Pansy put an arm round her. “Don’t bawl, Delphie: we’re home and dry. Our cousins won’t give us away.”

    “That does not alter the moral poh-pos-hi-ti-on!” she sobbed.

    “Elinor,” noted Pansy, leaning her curly head on Delphie’s neat one.

    Delphie sniffed and gulped. “Yes—but she was so admirable, Pansy: she would not have approved at all.”

    “That is true, but scarcely to the point. We have not hurt anyone—indeed, you are so good with the little girls that I feel we have been a positive influence for good,” said Pansy with a little smile, “even if not one of the empty-heads of the middle class ever retains a single mathematical principle or the name of one river of the world!”

    Delphie smiled wanly. “Perhaps. But is that not an instance of the end justifying the means, dearest?”

    “No,” said Pansy firmly, not bothering to think about it. “Stop worrying: no-one suspects, and Miss Blake told us that she was very pleased with both of us.”

    Delphie gulped. On the whole, that made her feel more guilty, not less. But she said meekly: “Very well. I shall try not to worry.”

    Pansy had to be satisfied with this. She did not fancy, however, that Delphie would immediately cease worrying; but she felt that her sister’s nerves would settle down again when it became apparent that the Parkers were going to keep their secret. And when she realized their one big worry was over and done with: their cousins’ visit to Guillyford Place was the only thing they had had to fear, and now they were over that hurdle! They could be easy for the rest of the year.

    Pansy had, however, reckoned without two points, one of which was Miss Parker’s admirable sense of duty; and the other of which was that convenient gap where the stairs went up, by Miss Blake’s sitting-room.

Next Chapter:

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