"We mustn't say _that_." Miss Greta was winding the last couple of yards. "You see, she's an orphan, and I rather took her under my wing at school--poor child!"
Bobby asked if the American was going to stay with us.
"Oh, no," said the wool winder, now at the end of her task. "At the inn, of course." Miss Greta glanced again at the clock as she gathered up her knitting.
"Cart wasn't ordered till six," Madge threw in. "Don't you mean to bring her here at all?"
"I should be delighted. But--I can't flatter myself that my little friend would interest _you_." She swept the circle. "Quite a _nice_ girl, but ..." (a deprecatory wave of one hand), "well, crude. Western, you know. She has grown used to looking to me for the summer. I tried to explain that--" the pause was eloquent of a delicate desire to spare feelings--"that I wasn't taking a holiday myself this year. But,"--on her way out of the hall Miss Greta laughed over her shoulder--"she's not perhaps so very quick at--how do you say it?--not so quick at the uptake." She turned at the sound of a motor car rushing up the drive.
Through the open lobby doors a girl was seen rising from her seat and scanning Kirklamont Hall with a slight frown. As the car swerved round to the entrance she called out to the chauffeur in a voice of appalling distinctness, and most unmistakably transatlantic: "Are you sure this is the place? It isn't _my_ idea of a.... _Oh!_" She had given one glance through the lobby and was out of the car as a bird goes over a hedge. "It is! It is!"--The girl stood in the hall, holding out her hands, "_Greta!_"
"My _dear_ Nan!" Miss von Schwarzenberg had hastened forward, more flurried than anybody there had ever seen her.
"Oh, my!" said the newcomer with a face of rapture. "Oh, _my_!" and she fell to hugging Miss von Schwarzenberg.
Bobby sat contorting his long legs and arms with unregenerate glee at Fräulein's struggle to be cordial and at the same time to disengage herself as rapidly as possible.
Lady McIntyre left her settle and pattered forward with hospitable intent. An instant of indecision on Miss von Schwarzenberg's part, and then Miss Ellis was duly presented.
She wasn't nearly so tall as Napier had thought her when she stood up in the car. This was because the figure was slight and extremely erect. For the rest, a small head, overweighted with a profusion of bright, brown hair; a rather childish face under a little golden-brown hat, guiltless of trimming but for the two brown wings set one on each side, rather far back. "The kind of hat," Napier pointed out afterward, "that Pheidias gave to Mercury. Cheek for a girl to wear a hat like that!"