"And you mean to tell me you are not going to the Arkwrights' on Friday, Polly?" she asks incredulously, when the two girls are exchanging confidences, and examining dresses in the seclusion of Pauline's bedroom. "What a shame. I'll soon make that right for you. Susan Arkwright is a connection of mine, you--"
"You are very kind," interrupts Pauline a little confusedly; "but on the whole perhaps it would be better, Flo, not to--to say anything about it. You see, I--I believe there was some misunderstanding or other between our family and theirs in days gone by, and--"
"Misunderstanding? Ha, ha!" breaks in Miss Wynyard, with her frank bold laugh. "That's a good way of putting it, and no mistake! Don't you know, my dear, that Robert the Dev--I mean your father--nearly drove Syd Arkwright to the wall in their soldiering days, and then invited his wife to elope with him? Susan was a very pretty woman a dozen years ago. Misunderstanding indeed! But that's all past and gone now, and it's ridiculous of them to visit it on you--very bad policy indeed. Just as if scores of others in the county hadn't as deep a grudge against your name as they! Polly, what's the matter? Why do you turn away? You absurd child, to mind my chatter! You can't be such an utter baby as not to know what your father was! Why should you mind talking about him with me, your dearest friend, your own Florrie? It it comes to that, you may discuss my old _pater's_ youthful peccadilloes as freely as you like. I dare say they were not more edifying than yours, only he did not wear such a bold front. Your father, my dear, was one of the handsomest, most reckless, and fascinating scamps of his generation. I was just thinking this afternoon if that very good-looking son of his takes to his ways, the husbands, fathers, brothers of Nutshire ought to rise in crusade and drive him from the soil--ha, ha!"
"Bob is not like that. Bob is a well-minded boy," murmurs the sister, in a rather stifled voice.
"The boy is father to the man, you would say. Well, time will reveal. Now hold up your head and give me a kiss, you absurd little goose! I must soon knock that nonsense out of you; and you'll come to the Arkwrights' if I work the invite? That's right. Jack would never forgive me, he said, if I didn't make you promise to come; and I can't afford to fall out with Jack; he's useful to me in many ways--though I do loathe cousins."