“I shouldn’t have wondered if he had called me Tredgold,” Stella said with a pretence at displeasure.
“What a horrid man!” Katherine replied, to whom this statement was made.
“Horrid yourself for thinking so,” cried her sister. “He is not a horrid man at all, he is very nice. We are going to be great--pals. Why shouldn’t we be great pals? He is a little tired of Lottie Seton and her airs, he said. He likes nice honest girls that say what they mean, and are not always bullying a fellow. Well, that is what he said. It is his language, it is not mine. You know very well that is how men speak, and Lottie Seton does just the same. I told him little thanks to him to like girls better than an old married woman, and you should have seen how he tugged his moustache and rolled in his seat with laughing. Lottie Seton must have suspected something, for she called out to us what was the joke?”
“I did not know you were on such terms with Mrs. Seton, Stella, as to call her by her Christian name.”
“Oh, we call them all by their names. Life’s too short for Missis That and Mr. This. Charlie asked me----”
“Charlie! why, you never saw him till to-day.”
“When you get to know a man you don’t count the days you’ve been acquainted with him,” said Stella, tossing her head, but with a flush on her face. She added: “I asked him to come over to lunch to-morrow and to see the garden. He said it would be rare fun to see something of the neighbourhood without Lottie Seton, who was always dragging a lot of fellows about.”
“Stella, what a very, very unpleasant man, to talk like that about the lady who is his friend, and who brought him here!”
“Oh, his friend!” cried Stella, “that is only your old-fashioned way. She is no more his friend! She likes to have a lot of men following her about everywhere, and they have got nothing to do, and are thankful to go out anywhere to spend the time; so it is just about as broad as it is long. They do it to please themselves, and there is not a bit of love lost.”
“I don’t like those kind of people,” said Katherine.
“They are the only kind of people,” Stella replied.
This conversation took place from one room to another, the door standing open while the girls performed a hasty toilette. All the picnic people had been parted with at the gate with much demonstration of friendship and a thousand thanks for a delightful day. Only the midge had deposited its occupants at the door. The two old cats were never to be got rid of. They were at that moment in another room, making themselves tidy, as they said, with the supercilious aid of Katherine’s maid. Stella did not part with hers in any circumstances, though she was about to dine in something very like a dressing-gown with her hair upon her shoulders. Mr. Tredgold liked to see Stella with her hair down, and she was not herself averse to the spectacle of the long rippled locks falling over her shoulders. Stella was one of the girls who find a certain enjoyment in their own beauty even when there is nobody to see.