"I think that, if I were you, I would say nothing to his sister,"

observed Janet.

"Very well. I will take your advice."

She changed the subject abruptly. "Let me know if Kate can be of any more use. She's quite anxious to go on helping you all. She's got so fond of Betty: she says she'd do anything for her."

"We're managing all right now, and G.o.dfrey really is a help, instead of a hindrance. He actually suggested that he should do the washing-up this morning!"

"That's the best thing I've ever heard of G.o.dfrey Radmore," exclaimed Miss Pendarth. "I sincerely hope--forgive me for saying so, Janet--that there's really nothing between him and Enid Crofton. I should be sorry for my worst enemy to marry that woman, if the things I was told about her were true."

"I don't believe that he is thinking of her, consciously--" Janet Tosswill spoke slowly, choosing her words.

"Of course she's making a dead set at him. But there's safety in numbers, even here," observed the other, grimly. "I hear that your Jack simply lives at The Trellis House. The whole village is talking about it."

Jack? Janet Tosswill felt vexed by what she considered a bit of stupid, vulgar, village gossip. "Jack's the most level-headed young man about women I've ever known," she said, trying to speak pleasantly. "If anyone has fallen in love with Mrs. Crofton, it's our silly little Rosamund!"

CHAPTER XV

The morning after Janet Tosswill's call at Rose Cottage, Rosamund followed her step-mother into the drawing-room immediately after breakfast, and observed plaintively that it did seem strange that "Enid"

was never asked to Old Place. "We take anything from her, and never give anything back," she said.

Janet, who had a certain tenderness for the pretty black sheep of the family, checked the sharp retort which trembled on her lips. Still, it was quite true that Rosamund had more than once been kept to lunch at The Trellis House, and that on the day of Nanna's accident Mrs. Crofton had issued a sort of general invitation to supper to the young people of Old Place--an invitation finally accepted, at Betty's suggestion, by G.o.dfrey Radmore and Rosamund.

Janet admitted to herself that they did owe Mrs. Crofton some civility.

If the thing had to be done, it might as well be done at once, and so, when Rosamund had reluctantly gone upstairs to do her share of the household work, his mother beckoned Timmy into the drawing-room, and told him that she would have a note ready for him to take to The Trellis House in a few minutes.

"Oh, Mum, do let Jack take it!" the boy exclaimed. "I can't go to The Trellis House with Flick, and it's such a bore to shut him up."

"Why can't Flick go with you?"

"Mum! Don't you remember? Mrs. Crofton is _terrified_ of dogs. Do let Jack take it!"

"But are you sure Jack is going there this morning?" she asked, and then she remembered Miss Pendarth's ill-natured remark.

"He goes there every morning," said Timmy positively, "and this morning he's going there extra early, as he's lending Mrs. Crofton our best preserving pan. She wants to make some blackberry jam."

And then there occurred one of those odd incidents which were always happening in connection with Timmy and with which his mother never knew quite how to deal. He screwed up his queer little face for a moment, shaded his eyes with his hand, and said quietly: "I think Jack is just starting down the drive now. You'll catch him if you'll open the window and shout to him, Mum--it's no good my going after him--he wouldn't come back for _me_."

Janet Tosswill got up from her writing-table. She opened the nearest window and, stepping out, looked to her right. Yes, there was Jack's neat, compact figure sprinting down the long, straight avenue towards the gate. He was holding a queer-looking, badly done up parcel in his hands.

"Jack! Jack! Come here for a minute--I want you," she called out in her clear, rather high-pitched voice.

He slackened, and it was as if she could see him hesitating, wondering whether he dare pretend he had not heard her. Then he turned and ran back down the drive and across the wide lawn to the window.

"What is it?" he asked breathlessly. "I'm late as it is! I'm taking one of our preserving pans to The Trellis House. The fruit was all picked yesterday."

"I won't be a moment. I want you to take a letter for me to Mrs. Crofton.

I'm asking her to come in to dinner to-night."

She turned back into the room and, sitting down, took up her pen: "Timmy?

Go into the scullery, and help Betty for a bit."

After her little son had left the room, she called out to Jack, "Do come inside; it fidgets me to feel that you're standing out there."

After what seemed to Jack Tosswill a long time, though it was only three minutes, his step-mother turned, and held out her note: "She needn't write--a verbal answer will do. If she can't come we shall have done the civil thing."

And then, thinking aloud, she went on: "Somehow I don't expect her to stay long in Beechfield. She's too much of a London bird."

"I don't suppose she would have come at all if she had known what a beastly, inhospitable place Beechfield is," said Jack sharply. Though he was in such a hurry to be off, he waited in order to add: "She's been here nearly a month, and you've never called on her yet--it's too bad!"

Janet Tosswill flushed deeply. Jack had not spoken to her in such a tone since he was fifteen.

"What nonsense! She must be indeed silly and affected," she exclaimed, "if she expected me to pay her a formal call, especially as we had her in to supper the very first day she was here! I might retort by saying that she might have sent or called to know how poor old Nanna was! Everyone in the village has done so--but then your friend, Jack, is not what my father used to call '18 carat'!"

"I think it's we who are not '18 carat,'" he answered furiously. "We have shown Mrs. Crofton the grossest discourtesy, and I happen to know that she feels it very much."

Janet Tosswill looked at her elder stepson with a feeling of blank amazement. It had often astonished her to notice how completely Jack had his emotions and temper under control. Yet here he was, his face aglow with anger, his voice trembling with rage.

Poor Janet! She had had long days of fatigue and worry since the old nurse's accident, and suddenly she completely lost her temper. "I don't want to say anything unkind about the little woman, but I do think her both silly and second-rate. I took a dislike to her when she behaved in such a ridiculous manner over Flick."

"You were almost as frightened as she was," said Jack roughly.

"It's quite true that I was frightened for a moment, but only because I was afraid for Timmy."

"I can tell you one thing--she won't come here again to supper unless I can give her my word that all our dogs are really shut up. And I fear I must ask you to undertake to see that Timmy does not let Flick out after I _have_ shut him up."

Janet Tosswill held out her hand. "I think you'd better give me that note back," she said curtly. "We certainly don't want anyone here of the kind you have just described. From something G.o.dfrey said to me it's clear that Mrs. Crofton's horror of dogs is just a pose she thinks makes her interesting. Why, her husband bred terriers; Flick actually came from there! And G.o.dfrey says that she herself had a little dog called by the absurd name of 'Boo-boo' to which she was devoted."

"'Boo-boo' was the exception that proves the rule," answered Jack hotly.

"As for Colonel Crofton, it was beastly of him to breed terriers, knowing how his wife felt about dogs! She told me herself she would never have married him if she had known there was any likelihood of that coming to pa.s.s. She feels about dogs as some people feel about cats."

"I never heard such nonsense!"

"Nonsense?" he repeated in an enraged tone. "It isn't nonsense! The best proof that that horror of dogs is instinctive with her is the effect that she herself has on every dog she comes across. That was shown the evening she was here."

"Really, Jack, that's utterly absurd! Flick was not thinking of her at all. Something in the garden had frightened him. Your father feels sure that it was a snake which he himself killed the next morning." And then, for she was most painfully disturbed by this scene between herself and Jack, she said quietly: "I'm sorry that Mrs. Crofton ever came to Beechfield. I didn't think there was anyone in the world who would make you speak to me as you have spoken to me now."

"I hate injustice!" he exclaimed, a little shamefacedly. "I can't think why you've turned against her, Janet. It's so mean as well as so unkind!

She has hardly any friends in the world, and she thought by the account G.o.dfrey gave of us that _we_ should become her friends."

"It's always a woman's own fault if she has no friends, especially when she's such an attractive woman as Mrs. Crofton," said Janet shortly. She hesitated, and then added something for which she was sorry immediately afterwards: "I happen to know rather more about Mrs. Crofton than most of the people in Beechfield do."

She spoke with that touch of mysterious finality which is always so irritating to a listener who is in indifferent sympathy with a speaker.