“Well, I...” She faltered. “I assumed that you would know what to do next.”
“You thought that you could demand I assist you in this endeavour and that once I agreed, I would take on the entire responsibility for producing all ideas and activities related to it?”
“Exactly.” She smiled, relieved. “I’m so glad we’re on the same page, Georgie.”
This time, Miss Darcy sighed so hard that the curtains actually fluttered.
“Don’t sigh so, my dear friend,” Caroline chided. “You’ll give yourself sad lung.”
Georgiana blinked, a forkful of ham faltering on the way to her mouth. “What on earth is sad lung?”
“It’s something Mother used to remind Louisa and I about when we were small. One should only ever emit delicate, ladylike sighs or else one depresses one’s lungs to such an extent that one will not be able to breathe properly in one’s old age.”
Georgiana stared at Caroline over the rack of toast, which was rapidly dwindling. “I do not think that is a real condition.”
“Why, it certainly is. Mrs Rotheringham died of sad lung in Bath only four years ago.”
“Mrs Rotheringham drowned,” Georgiana corrected.
“A terrible accident which she might well have survived,” Caroline pointed out, “had she not possessed sad lungs to begin with. Weakened, you see, by all the vigorous sighing.”
Georgiana mouthed the wordssad lungat her plate, then evidently gave up pursuing that particular line of inquiry. “If we are committed to this scheme, I suggest we begin here.”
“At the breakfast table?”
“In the house,” Georgiana clarified. “Once you have eaten your fill, we shall go around the place, room by room.”
“And do what?”
“You shall see. Do you intend to eat the rest of your toastthis morning, or would you prefer to continue mutilating it beyond all recognition?”
“It will be far more mutilated where it is going,” Caroline muttered, but she put down her knife anyway and acquiesced to choke down another piece of toast, calmed a little by the idea that the Great Endeavour was about to begin.
