I who brought down the
scarlet coat."
"And I didn't do a thing but look on," said Theo. "I knew you'd be
angry, and I tried to make Maggie behave, but she wouldn't."
"I don't know as it is anything to you what Maggie does, and I think
it would look quite as well in you to take part of the blame yourself,
instead of putting it all upon your sister," was Madam Conway's reply;
and, feeling almost as deeply injured as Mrs. Jeffrey herself, Theo
began to cry, while Maggie, with a few masterly strokes, succeeded
in so far appeasing the anger of her grandmother that the good lady
consented for the young gentlemen to stay to breakfast, saying,
though, that "they should decamp immediately after, and never darken
her doors again."
"But Mr. Douglas is rich," sobbed Theo from behind her pocket
handkerchief--"immensely rich, and of a very aristocratic family, I'm
sure, else where did he get his money?"
This remark was timely, and when fifteen minutes later Madam Conway
was presented to the gentlemen in the hall her manner was far more
gracious towards George Douglas than it was towards Henry Warner, to
whom she merely nodded, deigning no answer whatever to his polite
apology for having made himself so much at home in her house. The
expression of his mouth was as usual against him, and, fancying he
intended adding insult to injury by laughing in her face, she coolly
turned her back upon him ere he had finished speaking, and walked
downstairs, leaving him to wind up his speech with "an old
she-dragon"!
By this time both the sun and the servants had arisen, the former
shining into the disorderly dining room, and disclosing to the latter
the weary, jaded Anna, who, while Madam Conway was exploring the
house, had thrown herself upon the lounge and had fallen asleep.
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