back quite easily to her, and then at the end astounding Lucia by the profundity of her knowledge. It must be secretly done, though; the whole point of it would be to let it all burst upon Lucia. Really, there were few days (except on those immediately preceding the alternate Tuesdays) in which she could not snatch half an hour or so from her other occupations and devote them to French. There were only forty-two lessons in Gasc; she could manage one a day, so that before they went to Sea View she would be firmly grounded in Gasc. Indeed, on many days she might be able to manage more than half an hour: to-day, for instance, she could quite well write that stiff letter to the ironmonger after lunch, when she usually rested, and devote all the time till 11.45 to making the earlier lessons her own again. But Gasc appeared to be in smaller and less legible print than it used to be, and she put on her spectacles.
"Astonish Lucia," she said out loud in her gruffest voice, before plunging into these forgotten intricacies.
Upstairs in the meantime Elizabeth, after lying down on her sofa for half an hour, began to get restless and also hungry, since she had had no breakfast. Moreover, she had not read the paper, and she was also burning with practically untameable curiosity to see whether Catherine and Lucia had tried to clear up that fatal fricassee of egg on the dining-room carpet, or had let it dry, to be taken out with ammonia afterwards. It would be just like them to scrape it off while still wet, and so make matters really serious. Resting, in fact, soon became impossible, and she stole downstairs without feeling she was running any foolhardy risk of detection, since Catherine would certainly have gone to the writing-room by now, and Lucia would be either in her own room or out in the garden. Also she must have bread and butter at the very least; what she wanted was an egg beaten up with milk. That was harder of access: bread and butter and milk she could still get from the dining-room. The tea, however, would have been standing too long.
She reached the dining-room undetected, and flew to the egg-stain. She might have guessed; it was already driven into the carpet by the ill-directed efforts of a zealous hand. The energy with which it had been done seemed to point to Lucia; the clumsiness to Catherine. But bread and butter was still there, milk was still there, and with these she could stay the pangs of her hunger, and appear at lunch in the martyr-guise of one who had not breakfasted. But delay was dangerous, and she left the room
