No one knew better than her brother that Maud's remark had not been intended to convey a hint that Miss Carson's place as governess was with her young charges. The disagreeable habit of implying things was not one of Maud's faults. Innuendos were beneath her--what she wanted to say she said outright. But sometimes, as in this case, her brother wished she was not so utterly indifferent to the effect her bluntness produced. It was because he had seen Margaret wince under it that he had exerted himself to remove any unpleasant impression that her words might have left on the holiday governess's mind.
"I--I do like your company best, of course," Margaret said. Then, with a heightening colour, and in a stammering, choked voice which showed what an effort it was to overcome her shyness and speak so that every one could hear, she said, "I beg your pardon for saying last night that I hated you all. Of course, it was not true."
"That is a great weight off our minds," said Maud in a tone of raillery. "Now we can breathe again. We were so afraid that you hadn't--well--exactly taken to us last night."
The light-hearted way in which she spoke quite robbed the words of any sting they might otherwise have conveyed, and Margaret was able to join in the laughter which this very mild way of describing the feeling she had shown the previous night evoked.
She was finding out that very little made the Danvers laugh, and when she came to think it over, she arrived at the right conclusion that she found this surprising, not because they laughed more than other young people, but because she had been used to the society of people who laughed so very much less. But anything seemed to serve with them as a cause for laughter. If the joke were a good one it evoked hearty laughter, if it were a bad one the perpetrator was laughed at; and if fresh jokes, good or bad, ran short, there was seemingly an endless store of old ones to be drawn upon, supplemented by catchwords and phrases from the latest musical comedy. These, of course, were even more unintelligible to Margaret than the rest of the queer, scrappy talk that made up the bulk of their conversation; but as she made no attempt to share in it, the fact that even their most everyday slang expressions were strange to her, passed unnoticed. For the most part, however, they were too much occupied with their own affairs to have much attention to spare for her; and it dawned upon Margaret, before even that first meal in their society was ended, that she need not have been afraid that they would bear malice against her for her outburst of the night before. They were really scarcely interested enough in her to do that. Under cover of the brisk chatter that went on round her, she took the opportunity of glancing round the table and studying the various members of the household.