'Oh, indeed,' said Alda. 'That's your account of it.'
'Yes,' said Cherry eagerly, 'all that pretending not to care, and that it was a trick of Stella's, was nothing but reaction. And then, you know, Clem, you did improve the occasion.'
'There!' exclaimed Alda,' you see how it is, Wilmet; nothing but vindication of those two intolerable children! Now, just come, Wilmet, and see if they are to be backed up in this.'
But as Wilmet, perfectly bewildered, and feeling no hope of comprehension among so many, followed Alda from the room and up the stairs, Stella came plunging after, with a cry, 'Alda, Alda, don't hurt them!' just as from a housemaid's closet half way up, Alda was bringing to light a basin containing a dozen tadpoles twirling their shadowy tails.
'Now, Wilmet,' she solemnly said, 'do you approve of all those horrid brutes swimming in my bath?'
'They aren't in the well, I hope,' said Wilmet.
'How can you be so absurd, Wilmet? That's the way those children showed their sorrow that Clement talks about. I'll never believe but he helped them.'
'To weep them,' said a voice above; and Angela's face was seen looking out of her bush of hair over the balusters of the top storey. 'They are just like black heraldic tears.'
'You don't mean that they put them in?' asked Wilmet.
'What else should I mean?'
'And didn't she squall?' shouted Bernard; and then came a duet-
'Dame, dame, what makes your ducks to squall,
Duck to squall, duck to squall, duck to squall?
Meeting o' pollywogs! Meeting wi' pollywogs?'
'Hush, children, this is shocking,' said Wilmet, in the low impressive voice by which she could always still a tumult. 'How could you take advantage of my absence to do this?'
'Because Alda deserved it,' cried Angela, bouncing downstairs. 'There, Alda! I said I should tell of you if you told of us.'
'Angela, that is not the way to speak to your elder sister.'
'She isn't like an elder sister!' exclaimed Angel. 'Stella would be ashamed to do like her, eating up the strawberries Mr. Froggatt brought for poor Cherry when she was ill.'
'I'm sure you had your share!' retorted Alda.
'You would have them in for dessert, and you helped us, only Sister Constance and Clem left all theirs for Cherry, and then you went by yourself and ate them all up.'
The very fact of shouting out such a charge showed a state of insubordination such as might make Wilmet's hair stand on end, and she simply disbelieved so childish an accusation against her own equal in age. 'You should not say such things, Angela,' she answered, in her low tone of reproof; 'there must be a mistake.'
'I am afraid it is quite true,' said Clement's quiet voice, as he stood arrested on his way by the block upon the landing-place.
'The children make such an uproar,' said the exasperated Alda. 'I'm sure I thought Geraldine's had been taken long before, and in this parching weather fruit is quite a necessity to me.'
Wilmet was too much aghast at the admission to speak. It was a strange tangle: Clement standing straight and still on the landing- place; Wilmet, with Theodore humming to himself, as innocent of the fray as the tadpoles that Stella was cherishing in the cupboard doorway; Alda, flushed and angry; and on the upper flight, Angela and Bernard dancing and roaming in vehement excitement between anger and alarm. 'Well that Lance was not in this hubbub! thought deafened and amazed Wilmet.
'What has this to do with the tadpoles?' she asked, in an endeavour to comprehend.
'We said she should be served out,' sung Bernard, 'with a polly- polly-pollywog bath.'
'But, Bernard, hush!-Angel! don't you see it was no business of yours if Alda did forget?'
She was unprepared for the outbreak this brought on her. 'You, too, Wilmet! Every one backs up those children in their behaviour to me! Lady Herbert Somerville, and Clement, and all! If only Ferdinand saw it!'
'Just step up, Wilmet,' said Clement gently, 'and see whether the children are in league with me.'
He followed Wilmet up to the door of the barrack, an attic that he shared with Lance and Bernard, and showed the long beam that crossed it pasted with a series of little figures cut out in paper, representing a procession in elaborate vestments; and at the end a long-backed individual kneeling before the chair of a confessor, who bore a painful resemblance to the Vicar of St. Matthew's.
'We only wanted to make Tina feel at home,' giggled Angela.
'It would be no matter,' pursued Clement, 'if it were merely quizzing myself. I am used to that; but this is trenching on sacred ground.'
'Bless me, your old white beam!' exclaimed Angela, with an affected start.
'It is exceedingly improper and irreverent,' said Wilmet. 'I am ashamed that such a thing should have been done in this house.'
'Really,' said Alda, 'it seems to me very droll and clever, with no harm in it at all; only people like Clement never can take a joke.'
'You can't mean to justify such a one as this,' said Wilmet; but, to her still greater astonishment, Alda broke out,
'There! You are turning against me! You are taking Clement's part, though you didn't care what they did to me-not if it had been snakes and adders!'
This, decidedly in Mrs. Thomas Underwood's style, elicited a peal of laughter from the two naughty children, and the corners of Clements mouth relaxed, bringing Alda to a gush of tears. 'You never used to be like this to me, Wilmet.'
'I never saw you like this, dear Alda,' said Wilmet, low and gently, but in decided repression. 'Come into our room, and let me try to understand.'
So began a morning of mutual complaints, as if everybody were against everybody, agreeing in nothing but in appealing to the elder sister. First, there was Alda's story. Never had there been such a miserable time-with Geraldine interfering, fussy, fretful, fault-finding; Clement intolerable in primness and conceit, only making the children worse when he pretended to keep them in order, and making such a fuss about Geraldine, when nothing ailed her but change of weather, incurring the expense of the Dearport doctor, and bringing down the Sister upon them, so awkward to have her in the drawing-room in that dress, but Sisters always thrust themselves into families. She hoped she had shown my Lady that she was not to be overawed by a title- such affectation, not using it! No consideration for her; the servants regularly spoilt, both of them; Martha a vulgar insolent creature, and Sibby disgustingly familiar and slovenly, no good at all, not even to keep Theodore out of the way. At which Theodore, knowing no more than his own name and Alda's displeasure, set up a dismal howl; and as Wilmet chose to coax and fondle him into silence instead of scolding and turning him out, Alda went off in a huff, muttering about asylums and proper places; and Wilmet descended to the kitchen, the little weak hand clasped tight into hers.
A sore sight awaited her below; the bills of this month for luxuries of sinful extravagance in her economical eyes! Chicken and asparagus, ducks and peas, even in the height of their season, were enormities to such housekeeping as hers, and had raised the sum total to four times the amount that her foreboding soul had dreaded. It exceeded her present supplies, and was a grave addition to the expenses of the two illnesses, that were serious enough already.
Martha was eloquent, not to say defiant, in self-defence. 'You see, Miss Underwood, if I'd been let alone, or Miss Cherry had been the one to take my orders from, which we could have made it out to your satisfaction; but with Miss Halder, which expects everything to be just like what it was in the fammerly up in London, which it stands to reason as it can't; which she hasn't got no more notion than a baby of prices, nor seasons, nor nothink; which is very determined, too, which won't suffer a word from nobody; which if you hadn't been coming home, Miss Underwood, I'd have given warning, which have always given you satisfaction.'