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.
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