"Do sit down," said Clara, too urgently. She was so preoccupied that Hilda’s indifference to her new furniture did not affect her.
They all sat down, primly, in the pretty primness of the drawing-room, and Rupert leaned as if tired against his mother’s fine skirt.
Hilda, expectant, glanced vaguely about her. Auntie Hamps did the same. On the central table lay a dictionary of the English language, open and leaves downwards; and near it a piece of paper containing a long list of missing words in pencil. Auntie Hamps, as soon as her gaze fell on these objects, looked quickly away, as though she had by accident met the obscene. Clara caught the movement, flushed somewhat, and recovered herself.
"I’m so glad you’ve come," she repeated yet again to Hilda, with a sickly-sweet smile. "I did so want to explain to you how it was we didn’t ask George--I was afraid you might be vexed."
"What an idea!" Hilda murmured as naturally as she could, her nostrils twitching uneasily in the atmosphere of small feuds and misunderstandings which Clara breathed with such pleasure. She laughed, to reassure Clara, and also in enjoyment of the thought that for days Clara had pictured her as wondering sensitively why no invitation to the party had come for George, while in fact the party had never crossed her mind. She regretted that she had no gift for Bert, but decided to give him half-a-crown for his savings-bank account, of which she had heard a lot.
"To tell ye the truth," said Clara, launching herself, "we’ve had a lot of trouble with Bert. Albert’s been quite put about. It was only the day before yesterday Albert got out of him the truth about the night of your At Home, Hilda, when he ran away after he’d gone to bed. Albert said to him: ’I shan’t whip you, and I shan’t put you on bread and water. Only if you don’t tell me what you were doing that night there’ll be no birthday and no birthday party--that’s all.’ So at last Bert gave in. And d’you know what he was doing? Holding a prayer-meeting with your George and that boy of Clowes’s next door to your house down Hulton Street. Did you know?"
Hilda shook her head bravely. Officially she did not know.
"Did you ever hear of such a thing?" exclaimed Auntie Hamps.