about my going there to tea.'

'Going there to tea,' Alie repeated. 'What do you mean, Biddy?'

'Mean what I say. She's coming here to tea two times every week if it's
fine, so I think they might 'avite me sometimes, and when I said to her
just now I'd like to come, she looked quite funny and only said she'd
ask her mother. Not a bit as if she'd like it.'

Rosalys felt very vexed.

'Really, Biddy, you might know how to behave,' she said. 'People don't
offer themselves to other people like that.'

'They do,' Bride retorted. 'I've heard papa say he was going to "offer
himself to luncheon" to Aunt Mary's, and----'

'She's a relation,' Alie interrupted.

'Well, and once mamma offered herself to tea to old Lady Butler--I know
she did--just before we went away at Christmas.'

'That's quite different; she knows old Lady Butler so
well--and--and--mamma's grown up and knows what's right, and you're a
little girl, and you shouldn't do things like that without asking
leave,' said Rosalys decidedly.

'You're a cross unkind thing,' said Biddy; 'and if you speak like that
I'll not go on being good any more.'