"I am not," said Kitty, helping herself to bread and butter. "I should like them all over again—lessons and all." She stole a glance at Rupert, but his still face betrayed no consciousness of her remark. "I am going to keep up my character. I am going to play at battledore and shuttlecock with the boys in the dining-room. Who will come, too? Qui m'aime me suit."
"Then I will be the first to follow," said Hugo, in her ear.
She pouted and drank her tea, glancing half-reluctantly toward Rupert. But he would not heed.
"I will come, too," said Elizabeth, relieving the awkwardness of a rather long pause. "I always like to see you play. Kitty is as light as a bird," she added to Mr. Vivian, who bowed and looked profoundly uninterested.
Nevertheless, in a few minutes he found the drawing-room so dull without the young people, that he, too, descended to see what was going on. He heard the sound of counting in breathless voices as he drew near the drawing-room. "Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, three hundred. One, two, three——"
"Kitty and Mr. Luttrell have kept up to three hundred and three, Mr. Vivian!" cried one of the boys as he entered the room.
Mr. Vivian joined the spectators. It was a pretty sight. Kitty, with her floating locks, flushed face, trim, light figure, and unerring accuracy of eye, was well measured against Hugo's lithe grace and dexterity. The two went on until eight hundred and twenty had been reached; then the shuttlecock fell to the ground. Kitty had glanced aside and missed her aim.
"You must try, now, Mr. Vivian," she said, advancing towards him, battledore in hand, and smiling triumphantly in his face.
"No, thank you," said Rupert, who had been shading his eyes with one hand, as if the light of the lamps had tried them: "I could not see."
"Could you not? Oh, you are short-sighted, perhaps. Ah! there go Hugo and Johnny. This is better than being grown-up, I think. Am I like the little girl that you used to know in Gower-street now, Mr. Vivian?"