The plan she hit upon
was effective, but vulgar, and must not be witnessed by a boy of
inconvenient memory and mistimed fluency. She got rid of him with
high-principled dexterity. "Reginald," said she, sadly, "you are a
naughty boy, a disobedient boy, to listen when your papa told you not,
and to tell me a pack of falsehoods. I must either tell your papa, or
I must punish you myself; I prefer to do it myself, he would whip you
so"; with this she suddenly opened her dressing-room door, and pushed
the terrible infant in, and locked the door. She then told him through
the keyhole he had better cease yelling, because, if he kept quiet,
his punishment would only last half an hour, and she flew downstairs.
There was a large hot-house with two doors, one of which came very
near to the house door that opened into the garden. Mrs. Bazalgette
entered the hothouse at the other end, and, hidden by the exotic trees
and flowers, made rapidly for the door Lucy and David must pass. She
found it wide open. She half shut it, and slipped behind it, listening
like a hare and spying like a hawk through the hinges. And, strange as
it may appear, she had an idea she should make a discovery. As the
finished sportsman watches a narrow ride in the wood, not despairing
by a snap-shot to bag his hare as she crosses it, though seen but for
a moment, so the Bazalgette felt sure that, as the couple passed her
ambush, something, either in the two sentences they might utter, or,
more probably, in their tones and general manner, would reveal to one
of her experience on what footing they were.
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