"Yes, it's all very well to treat it like that," said Lady Grafton. "But if it hadn't been for you it would certainly have been brought to a point then. They were both ready for it, and Ella Carruthers knew perfectly well that she had been asked down there to be proposed to. It was you and Caroline who stopped it, and I'm exceedingly annoyed with you, though I try not to show it." "You don't try very hard, dear," said Caroline. "We expected it, too, and if we weren't quite ready for it at first we had got quite used to it by that time." "We both showed it, too," said Beatrix. "We were as sweet to Ella as only we know how to be; and we took a great deal of pains to show darling Daddy that we were pleased with him. He knew that we knew all right, and were only waiting." "Yes, and how did you show it? By hanging round him the whole time, and petting him as if you were children, instead of--" "Instead of great girls of twenty-one and twenty-two," suggested Beatrix. "That's how we always have treated him, and always shall." "Two married women," proceeded Lady Grafton. "And one of them soon to become a mother," added Beatrix. "Nobody was ever allowed to forget _that_," retorted Lady Grafton. "It was crammed down Ella's throat that she would be a step-grandmamma, and George could never move anywhere without you flopping about him and calling him 'Daddy darling.' There wasn't much 'Daddy darling' when you fell fatuously in love, and treated him as if he counted for about as much as old Jarvis. Then there was Caroline--" "Oh, it's my turn now," said Caroline. "Yes, you were almost as bad. You've left his house, but you come up every day to see that his sheets are properly aired, and send out in the middle of dinner to see whether his hot water bottle is filled." "Oh, Aunt Mary!" "Well, that's the impression you give everybody. You made him look like an elderly man, when if you'd let him alone he'd have seemed quite like a young one. How would you have liked it yourselves, if you'd been in Ella's place? She's only a year or two older than you. Probably what put her off was that she was afraid you'd be calling her 'Mummy darling!'" "Oh, it was _she_ that was put off!" said Caroline. "You said at first that it was Dad, because we turned up our noses at it." "I've no patience with you," concluded Lady Grafton, ignoring this. "No, you don't seem to have much, darling," said Beatrix sweetly. "You're all wrong though. Caroline and I have been talking it over. We think that she was almost ready to marry him then. She behaved to us as if she were. We can't tell you how, but we both felt the same about it. She wanted to know how we should take it, and we let her know that we should be pleased. We understood each other perfectly, though not a word was said directly." "I wish _I'd_ said a word, directly. It only wanted that. One is afraid of interfering, and then one wakes up to find everything has gone wrong."