"Why are you not having your nursery-tea?" she said. "We do not want you here unless we send for you."
"I want to see uncle Hubert," persisted the boy stolidly.
Hubert held out his hand to him with a smile that children still found winning.
"Come in, little man," he said. "I want to see you too."
Dick marched in at once, still, however, keeping an eye fixed upon his mother. There was something almost like fear in the look; and it was noticeable that neither the General nor Enid spoke to invite him into the room.
"You may come in," Florence said at last, very coldly—almost as one might speak to a grown person whom one had strong reason to dislike—"but you cannot stay more than five minutes. You are not wanted here."
"Oh, come, I think we all want him!" said Hubert good-humoredly. "I wish to make my nephew's acquaintance, at any rate. I have something for him in my portmanteau up-stairs."
Florence made a sudden and, as it seemed, involuntary gesture, and knocked down a vase of flowers on the table at her right hand. There was some confusion in consequence, as the flowers had to be gathered up and the fragments of the broken vase collected, so that Hubert had little opportunity of talking to his nephew. And, as soon as "the fuss," as he mentally called it, was over, Mrs. Vane said, in her coldest, slowest voice—
"Now, Dick, you may go to the nursery. Say good-night."
"Good-night?" questioned Hubert. "Why, he does not go to bed at this hour in the afternoon, does he?"