"No," said Rose.
"Oh, well--to-morrow then," said Lotty.
Rose wanted to say No again to this. Lotty would have in her place, and would, besides, have expounded all her reasons. But she could not turn herself inside out like that and invite any and everybody to come and look. How was it that Lotty, who saw so many things, didn't see stuck on her heart, and seeing keep quiet about it, the sore place that was Frederick?
"Who is your husband?" asked Mrs. Fisher, carefully adjusting another nut between the crackers.
"Who should he be," said Rose quickly, roused at once by Mrs. Fisher to irritation, "except Mr. Arbuthnot?"
"I mean, of course, what is Mr. Arbuthnot?"
And Rose, gone painfully red at this, said after a tiny pause, "My husband."
Naturally, Mrs. Fisher was incensed. She couldn't have believed it of this one, with her decent hair and gentle voice, that she too should be impertinent.