"
Pauline flushed. "I never intended telling Hilary anything about it
unless I had good news for her; as for Patience--"
Out in the hall again, with the study door closed behind her, Pauline
stood a moment choking back a sudden lump in her throat. Would Uncle
Paul treat her letter as a mere piece of school-girl impertinence, as
father seemed to?
From the sitting-room came an impatient summons. "Paul, will you never
come!"
"What is it, Hilary?" Pauline asked, coming to sit at one end of the
old sofa.
"That's what I want to know," Hilary answered from the other end.
"Impatience says you've been writing all sorts of mysterious letters
this afternoon, and that you came home just now looking like---"
"Well, like what?"
"Like you'd been up to something--and weren't quite sure how the
grown-ups were going to take it," Patience explained from the rug
before the fire.
"How do you know I have been writing--anything?" Pauline asked.
"There, you see!" Patience turned to Hilary, "she doesn't deny it!"
"I'm not taking the trouble to deny or confirm little girl nonsense,"
Pauline declared. "But what makes you think I've been writing letters?"
"Oh, 'by the pricking of my thumbs'!" Patience rolled over, and
resting her sharp little chin in her hands, stared up at her sisters
from under her mop of short red curls.
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