Page:Braddon--Wyllard's weird.djvu/65

Rh contradict people. You mustn't contradict Aunt Hilda, because she is old."

"If cakes weren't wholesome she wouldn't have them," said Minnie, ignoring the blue twin's interruption, and pointing her chubby finger at Mrs. Wyllard. "She can have what she likes, and she is grown up and knows everything. She wouldn't give us unwholesome things. I know why we don't have such nice teas at home."

"Why not, Minnie?" asked Dora, to encourage conversation.

"Because Fräulein is too stingy. I heard cook say so the other day. She is always grumbling about the cream and butter. You don't grumble about the cream and butter, do you?" she asked, in her point-blank way.

"I'm afraid I'm not so good a housekeeper as the Fräulein," answered Dora.

"Then I like bad housekeepers best. I shall be a bad housekeeper when I grow up, and there shall always be cakes for tea—ever so many cakes, as there are here. I'll have some of that, please," pointing to an amber-tinted pound-cake, "first."

By this Minnie signified that she meant to eat her way through the varieties of the tea-table.

"And what will Jennie take?" asked Dora, smiling at the blue twin.

"Jennie's a bilious child," said Minnie authoritatively; "she ought to have something plain."

Jennie, with her large blue eyes fixed pathetically on the pound-cake, waited for whatever might be given to her.

"Do you think just one slice of rich cake would make you ill, Jennie?" asked Dora.

"I am sure it would," said Minnie, ploughing her way through her own slice. "She's always sick, if she eats rich things. She was sick when we went to see grandma. Grandma isn't rich, you know, because her husband was a clergyman, and they're always poor. But she gives us beautiful teas when we go to see her, and lets us run about her garden and pick the fruit, and trample on the beds, and do just as we like; so we don't mind going to tea with grandma, though she's old and deaf. Jennie had cherries and pound-cake the last time we went to see grandma, and she was ill all night. You know you were, Jennie."

The blue twin admitted the fact, and meekly accepted a hunch of sanitarian sponge-cake.

"You must not talk so much, Minnie; you are a perfect nuisance," said Hilda; and then she looked round hesitatingly once or twice before she asked, "What has become of Mr. Grahame? He generally honours us with his company at afternoon tea."