"Her manners are rather casual to you, aren't they, mother?" said Hilary, flinging herself down in the easiest chair in the room, and taking up the local paper, which had been brought in by Martin a few minutes before. "Oh, my dear, I don't mind," said Mrs. Danvers; "I am really getting quite fond of her. She left in a hurry that way just now, I expect, because she didn't like your little sneering speech at her. You know you have rather a sharp, unkind way with you sometimes, Hilary. Why don't you get on better with her?" "Because I don't like her," Hilary said curtly. "But, my dear, why not?" "Because I don't. I heard you persuading her to go to Los Angelos just now," she added. "Did she say she would go?" "No; I can't get her to say she would like to go, nor yet to say she won't go," said Mrs. Danvers. "Now I should have thought it was a chance she would have jumped at. But no; girls are so queer and independent nowadays, there is no accounting for them." "It is very ungrateful of her when you have been good enough to bother about it," said Hilary, who, though she was delighted to hear that so far the post in her sister's household was unfilled, for she cherished dreams of going out to California with Mrs. Lascelles herself, would not let slip the opportunity of running Margaret down to any one who would listen. "Did she say why she wouldn't go?" "Well, she did and she didn't," returned Mrs. Danvers, actually laying down her knitting for a moment as a recollection of the embarrassment Margaret had shown returned to her. "As far as I can gather, it is because she would not be allowed to do so by somebody or other, but who that somebody was she did not clearly explain to me." By a few dexterous questions Hilary got her mother to repeat the gist of the conversation that had just taken place between herself and the holiday governess, and when she had finished there was a queer little gleam in Hilary's eyes that Margaret would not have liked to have seen. "She would not be allowed to go, and when asked why not, had said that she would be prevented." Hilary turned these phrases over in her mind, and as soon as she could do so unperceived, wrote them down in a little note-book that she carried in her pocket.