This, of course, was entirely Miss Simpshall's fault. If she had not behaved as she did Bertie or Eva would have remembered to clean out the knife-box. As it was, the story of the field of glory came out over the gritty mutton and things, and father sent all the battlefield-makers to bed.
Molly was out of this. She was staying with Aunt Eliza, who was kind, if refined. She was to come back the next day. But as mother was on her way to the station to meet Aunt Maria for a day's shopping, she met a telegraph boy, who gave her a telegram from Aunt Eliza saying:
'Am going to Palace to-day instead of to-morrow. Fetch Marie.—Elise.'
So mother fetched her from Aunt Eliza's flat in Kensington and took her shopping with Aunt Maria. There were hours of shopping in hot, stuffy shops full of tired shop-people and angry ladies, and even the new hat and jacket and the strawberry ice at the pastry-cook's in Oxford Street did not make up to Molly for that tiresome day.
Still, she was out of the battlefield row. Only as she did not know that it could not comfort her.
When Aunt Maria had been put into her train, mother and Molly went home. As their cab
