'Is Olive better?' she asked abruptly, as Mildred seated herself beside her with needlework.
Mildred looked a little surprised as she answered, but a delicately-worded question or two soon showed her that Ethel was not entirely ignorant of the state of the case. She had met Richard in the town on the previous day, and, startled at his gloomy looks, had coaxed him, though with great difficulty, to accompany her home.
'It was not very easy to manage him in such a mood, continued Ethel, with her crisp laugh. 'I felt, as we were going up the Crofts, as though I were Una leading her lion. He was dumb all the way; he contrived a roar at the end, though--we were very nearly having our first quarrel.'
'I am afraid you were hard on your knight then.'
Ethel coloured a little disdainfully, but she coloured nevertheless.
'Boys were not knighted in the old days, Mildred--they had to win their spurs, though,' hesitating, 'few could boast of a more gallant exploit perhaps;' but with a sudden sparkle of fun in her beautiful eyes, 'a lionised Richard, not a Coeur-de-Lion, but the horrid, blatant beast himself, must be distressful to any one but a Una.'
'Poor Richard! you should have soothed instead of irritated him.'
'Counter-irritants are good for some diseases; besides, it was his own fault. He did not put me in possession of the real facts of the case until the last, and then only scantily. When I begged to know more, he turned upon me quite haughtily; it might have been Coeur-de-Lion himself before Ascalon, when Berengaria chose to be inquisitive. Indeed he gave me a strong hint that I could have no possible right to question him at all. I felt inclined half saucily to curtsey to his mightiness, only he looked such a sore-hearted Coeur-de-Lion.'
'I like your choice of names; it fits Cardie somehow. I believe the lion-hearted king could contrive to get into rages sometimes. If I were mischievous, which I am not, I would not let you forget you have likened yourself to Berengaria.'
It was good to see the curl of Ethel's lips as she completely ignored Mildred's speech.
'I suppressed the mocking reverence and treated him to a prettily-worded apology instead, which had the effect of bringing him 'off the stilts,' as a certain doctor calls it. I tell him sometimes, by way of excuse, that the teens are a stilted period in one's life.'