with Aldous, ambling along the hedgerows that lined Prickwillow Road. She was still fuming over Disgraceful Mary Jane saying she overthought things. A dose of occasional thinking, she thought, would do Mary Jane a mountain of good. Pocked Louise pressed her lips together grimly. She didn’t care what they said. She would never, never, never allow herself to grow to be a noodle-headed young lady whose brains had been sacrificed on the altar to boy-worship. Though Louise’s experience with males was limited, she knew enough of what sticky-fingered fiends her boy cousins were to know that no male, be he ever so combed and shoe-shined, could tempt her to give up her intellectual pursuits. Never.
She wandered around a hedge, then Aldous let out a yap and dragged her headlong into someone.
“I say! Pardon me,” that someone said, disentangling himself from the leash and from Pocked Louise. “So very sorry.”
Louise leveled a look at him. It was a young man, a few years older, she would guess, than the eldest girls at Saint Etheldreda’s. What’s more, she deduced from his well-dressed look, courteous bearing, and rather excessive smiling, he was the sort of young man that Disgraceful Mary Jane or even Smooth Kitty might fall batty over. She was in such a pique with those overbearing young ladies, and with males in general, that she chose to hate this young man on principle.
“Do you mind telling me,” said her new acquaintance, oblivious to the ill-regard in which she held him, “if this house here is the finishing school for young ladies? Saint Ethel’s?”
Louise’s gaze narrowed. What could he want with a finishing school? Nothing worthwhile, she was sure. Perhaps he was an old beau of Mary Jane’s, and she’d posted a letter to him the moment their backs were turned. If Disgraceful Mary Jane thought the others would stand by while she invited f lirtatious young men over, she had another thing coming.
“Ely has several finishing schools for young women,” Louise said stif f ly. “This house isn’t one of them.”
“Oh,” he said, and knitted his eyebrows together. “I thought for certain this was the right place. When I met you, I assumed, naturally, you must be one of the students.”
“I live here with my grandparents,” Louise said, inwardly surprised to find what a liar she’d become. But the last thing any of the girls needed was more visitors. It wasn’t her fault this person was so inquisitive.
He tipped the brim of his hat toward her. “My apologies, then,” he said. “A very good day to you.” And he headed off in the direction of town.
Louise watched him leave. Mary Jane and Kitty, she knew, would have fits if they knew such a well-dressed young man had come a-calling. All the more satisfaction, then, Louise thought with a private smile, she would take in forgetting she ever saw him.
Meanwhile, Dull Martha and Dear Roberta had volunteered to cook supper, but Disgraceful Mary Jane insisted on doing so herself. Mary Jane, who had never cooked a thing in her life, was certain that with the aid of Mrs. Lea’s famous cookery volume she would be perfectly able to conjure up something edible.
“She’s acting like she doesn’t trust me,” Dull Martha whispered to Dear Roberta.
“Do you think so?” Roberta whispered back with deep concern.
“Ever since … what happened at Sunday dinner, I’ve wondered,” Martha said. “I cooked, you know.”
“But surely!” remonstrated Dear Roberta, who couldn’t imagine anyone suspecting ill of her dear roommate, Martha.
Martha tugged Roberta up the stairwell and into their bedroom. “Do you want to know what I think?”
“Of course!”
Martha lowered her voice to a hushed whisper. “With all this talk of murders, I think it’s curious that Mary Jane…” Her voice trailed off.
“Yes? Go on!”
Dull Martha removed her spectacles and polished them on her skirt. “Oh, I don’t know. I feel awful even thinking
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