Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/273

Rh He wanted to stay far more than she wished it, so it was she who put down his opposition and triumphed.

My mother lifted her eyebrows, and said very quietly:

“He’d better go home—and be straight.”

“But look how he’d feel—he’d have to tell them. . . and how would he feel! It’s really my fault, in the end. Don’t be piggling and mean and Grundyish, Matouchka.”

“It is neither meanness nor grundyishness——”

“Oh, Ydgrun, Ydgrun——!” exclaimed Lettie, ironically.

“He may certainly stay if he likes,” said mother, slightly nettled at Lettie’s gibe.

“All right, Mutterchen—and be a sweetling, do!”

Lettie went out a little impatient at my mother’s unwillingness, but Leslie stayed, nevertheless.

In a few moments Lettie was up in the spare bedroom, arranging and adorning, and Rebecca was running with hot-water bottles, and hurrying down with clean bed-clothes. Lettie hastily appropriated my best brushes—which she had given me—and took the suit of pajamas of the thinnest, finest flannel—and discovered a new tooth-brush—and made selections from my skirts and handkerchiefs and underclothing—and directed me which suit to lend him. Altogether I was astonished, and perhaps a trifle annoyed, at her extraordinary thought fulness and solicitude. He came down to supper, bathed, brushed, and radiant. He ate heartily and seemed to emanate a warmth of physical comfort and pleasure. The colour was flushed again into his face, and he carried