She was very old-fashioned in some
ways, and she had brought up her step-daughters to be, as regarded money
matters at any rate, as old-fashioned as herself. It seemed to her very
strange that Betty had allowed Godfrey Radmore to give her such a present
as a hat! Yet another thing puzzled her. She had understood that the
three of them were going off some way into Sussex to look at a house, but
they had evidently been up to London. Motor bonnets don't grow on country
hedges.
"Where's the cat?" she asked, looking round.
"Godfrey has taken her up to the nursery," said Betty, "partly to show
her to Nanna, and partly because we thought it would be better for her to
be quiet up there than down here."
"Oh, Mum--do say that she can stay up there," cried Timmy pleadingly. "I
hate the thought of her being in that dark old stable!"
"Very well; put her in the night nursery."
Even as she spoke, Janet was still gazing at her eldest step-daughter.
Betty certainly looked extraordinarily charming this afternoon. It showed
that the child required more change than she had had for many a long day.
They had got too much, all of them, into thinking of her as a stand-by.
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