p.

"No, you won't, my dear," Maud said, coming back to her place. "I haven't
half finished my brekker. But I thought you had had breakfast ages ago,
Miss Carson, with the kids in the nursery."

"Oh, ought I to have had my breakfast there?" Margaret said
uncomfortably, letting the fork she had just taken up fall with a clatter
on to her plate.

Maud shrugged her shoulders. "There is no ought about it," she said
carelessly. "But the kids do have their breakfast in the nursery, and
I believe the idea was that you should have yours there with them."

"Well, any way, Miss Carson," put in Geoffrey pleasantly, "you show your
good taste in preferring our society to theirs. Our manners may leave a
good deal to be desired"--though he did not glance at Joan, that young
person knew well that her recent behaviour was in his mind, and got very
red--"but theirs are worse. Their sense of humour is distinctly inferior,
and they think it awfully funny to put salt in your tea, and to mix
mustard with your pudding when you aren't looking, and things of that
sort, you know."

No one knew better than her brother that Maud's remark had not been
intended to convey a hint that Miss Carson's place as governess was with
her young charges. The disagreeable habit of implying things was not one
of Maud's faults. Innuendos were beneath her--what she wanted to say she
said outright. But sometimes, as in this case, her brother wished she was
not so utterly indifferent to the effect her bluntness produced. It was
because he had seen Margaret wince under it that he had exerted himself
to remove any unpleasant impression that her words might have left on the
holiday governess's mind.

"I--I do like your company best, of course," Margaret said. Then, with a
heightening colour, and in a stammering, choked voice which showed what
an effort it was to overcome her shyness and speak so that every one
could hear, she said, "I beg your pardon for saying last night that I
hated you all. Of course, it was not true."

"That is a great weight off our minds," said Maud in a tone of
raillery. "Now we can breathe again. We were so afraid that you
hadn't--well--exactly taken to us last night."

The light-hearted way in which she spoke quite robbed the words of any
sting they might otherwise have conveyed, and Margaret was able to join
in the laughter which this very mild way of describing the feeling she
had shown the previous night evoked.

She was finding o