“I have no objection to yachting, for my part. My. Uncle Sir Ralph was a great yachtsman. I have often been out with him. The worst of these girls is that they’ve nobody to give them a little understanding of things--nobody that knows. Old Tredgold can buy anything for them, but he can’t tell them how to behave. And even Katherine, you know----”
“Oh, Katherine--I have no patience with Katherine. She lets that little thing do whatever she pleases.”
“As if any one could control Stella, a spoilt child if ever there was one! May I ask you, Jane Shanks, what you intend to do?”
“To do?” cried Mrs. Shanks, her face, which was a little red by nature, paling suddenly. She stopped short in the very act of cutting a dahlia, a large very double purple one, into which the usual colour of her cheeks seemed to have gone.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake take care of those earwigs,” cried Miss Mildmay. “I hate dahlias for that--they are always full of earwigs. When I was a little child I thought I had got one in my ear. You know the nursery-maids always say they go into your ear. And the miserable night I had! I have never forgotten it. There is one on the rails, I declare.”
“Are we talking of earwigs--or of anything more important?” Mrs. Shanks cried.
“There are not many things more important, I can tell you, if you think one has got into your ear. They say it creeps into your brain and eats it up--and all sorts of horrible things. I was talking of going to the Cliff to see what those girls were about, and what Stella has to say for herself.”
“Well,” said her neighbour sharply, “did you mean to give them up without even asking what they had to say for themselves?”
“I--give them up?--I never thought of such a thing. You go so fast, Ruth Mildmay. It was only yesterday I heard of this talk, which never should have gone from me. At the worst it’s a thing that might be gossiped about; but to give them up----”
“You wouldn’t, I suppose,” said Miss Mildmay sternly, “countenance depravity--if it was proved to be true.”
“If what was proved to be true? What is it they say against her?” Mrs. Shanks cried.
But this was not so easy to tell, for nobody had said anything except the fact which everybody knew.
“You know what is said as well as I do,” said Miss Mildmay. “Are you going? Or do you intend to drop them? That is what I want to know.”