"Ye-e-es," said Anna, and opened the dining-room door.
The little girls were all here. Miss Bibby had said they might do exactly as they liked this morning. Pauline sat crocheting at a grey woollen shoulder cape which was destined for some old woman in some old asylum, and was among the least interesting of her work. Lynn was reading. Not face downward, on a rug and with swiftly-moving eyes and hurrying breath, as was her custom with a living book, but she had merely picked up the _History of England_ and sat with it quite listlessly on a chair. And Muffie was standing at the window, breathing on a pane from time to time and then drearily drawing figures upon her breath.
How could one be gay and do as one liked with the sitting-room door shut and locked on Little Knickerbockers?
Miss Bibby herself was standing before the bookcase, turning over a volume here and another one there. When Miss Kinross came in she was at Herbert Spencer's _Education_, thinking that surely so wise and practical an observer of youth as he must have offered some recipe for such a situation as had just passed.
But Spencer held out no helping hand. The lines on her forehead deepened.
"Are you all well?" said Miss Kinross, coming forward to shake hands with her. "How do you do, little girls? How are the coughs? And where is my little cavalier?"
"He--he--" said Miss Bibby, hesitating a second, then deciding not quite to conceal the outrage since here might be wisdom. Surely here _must_ be wisdom; for could any one dwell side by side with an author like Hugh Kinross and not absorb it in every pore?
"Max has been," said Miss Bibby, "not--not quite good, I am sorry to say. He--I have been obliged to leave him by himself in the sitting-room."
"Oh dear," said Kate, "poor little chap; what has he done?"
Miss Bibby looked helplessly from one little girl to the other. She could not actually repeat the terrible language, and yet she did so badly need help in the emergency.
"He--I regret to say he quite forgot himself and used some naughty words," she said. "What would you do in my position, Miss Kinross?"
"Oh," said Kate with a comfortable smile, "I'd let him out. He's such a little fellow."
"But he hasn't said he is sorry," said Miss Bibby anxiously. "I told him that when he rang the sitting-room bell I would go at once, for I should know it meant he was sorry."