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Miss Hiticutt chatted herself out, giving us an invitation to tea, for any day, including Ben and Miss Ann, who had not been visible since breakfast. April rains kept us indoors for several days. Ann refused to go to school. She must have a holiday; besides, pa needed her; she alone could take care of him, after all. Her mother said that she must go. "Who can make me, mum?"
Ann said the child was teething, for she had felt its gums; nothing else was the matter. There need be no apprehension. She should say so to Desmond and Ben, and would post a letter to her brother in unknown parts. "Miss Hiticutt has sent for us to come over to tea," Adelaide informed me. The black silk I wore would do, for we must go at once.
Declining the gingerbread, I accepted the Major. He was an old gentleman, in a good deal of highly starched linen, amusing himself by teazing Ann, who liked it, and paid him in impertinence. Adelaide played chess with him. Desmond sauntered in about nine, threw himself into a chair behind the sofa where I sat, and swung his arm over the back. The chessboard was put aside, and a gossipy conversation was started, which included Mrs. Somers, who was on a sofa across the room, but he did not join in it. I watched Mrs. Somers, as her fingers moved with her Berlin knitting, feeling more composed and settled as to my identity, in spite of my late outburst, than I had felt at any moment since my arrival in Belem. They were laughing at a funny description, which Ann was giving of a meeting she had witnessed between Miss Hiticutt and Mr. Pearsall, a gentleman lately arrived from China, after a twenty years' residence, with several lacs of rupees. Her delineation of Miss Hiticutt, who attempted to appear as she had twenty years before, was excellent. Ben, who was rolling and unrolling his mother's yarn, laughed till the tears ran, but Major Millard looked uneasy, as if he expected to be served
Adelaide talked slowly at first, and then soared into a region where I had never seen a woman an intellectual one. Miss Hiticutt followed her, and I experienced a new pleasure. Mrs. Somers was silent, but listened with respect to Miss Hiticutt, for she was of the real Belem azure in blood as well as in brain; besides, she was rich, and would never marry.
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