“Yes, my love, of course! But you are tired, and must be longing to go to bed! A bowl of broth—”
“No, no, just a little thin gruel!” said Abby, laughing at her. “You goose, I stopped to dine in Chippenham, and I’m not in the least tired. We’ll drink tea together, as soon as I’ve put off my hat, and enjoy a comfortable prose.” She added mischievously: “You look the picture of guilt—as though you were in dread of a scold! But how should I dare to scold my eldest sister? I’m not so brassy!”
She went away, leaving Selina to ring for the tea-tray, and mounted the stairs to her bedroom, where she found Mrs Grimston unpacking her trunk. A look of disapproval had settled on this formidable dame’s countenance, and she greeted Miss Wendover with the information that she had known at the outset how it would be if Miss Fanny were left with only Miss Selina, and Betty Conner (who had more hair than wit, and was flighty into the bargain) to take care of her. “Jauntering about all over!” she said darkly. “Concerts, and balls, and theatres, and picnics, and I don’t know what more besides!”
Abby had her own reasons for suspecting that her niece had been enjoying far more licence than had previously been granted to her; but as she had no intention of discussing the matter with Mrs Grimston she merely replied: “Well, how should you?” which effectually reduced her old nurse to offended silence.
The Misses Wendover had virtually had charge of their orphaned niece since she was two years old, when her mama had died in giving birth to a still-born son, and her papa had confided her to the care of her grandmama. His own death, three years later, in no way affected this arrangement; and when, in Fanny’s twelfth year, her grandpapa had met with a fatal accident on the hunting-field, and his widow had chosen to retire to Bath, instead of continuing to endure, in her Dower House, a climate which had never agreed with her frail constitution, his surviving son, James, who was Fanny’s guardian, had been only too glad to leave Fanny in her care.