"What could your father have meant?—sending such a chap as that!"
Rupert must have heard; he could not help hearing. He stood like a stock till Mr. Russell was gone, and then he turned sharp round upon me, and said—
"You ought to know better, Kitty!"
"Oh, ought I?" said I, getting very red. And of course, it wasn't the way for Rupert to speak to me. He had no business to call me to account in any such tone. But it didn't improve matters for me to be angry. I've often thought since that it was one of the times for mother's favourite saying. Less hot words would have been sooner mended. But we were both young and impatient.
"Oh, ought I?" says I. "I think you ought to know better by this time, and not behave as if you'd never learnt any manners."
"How do I behave?" Rupert asked in a fierce way.
"Treating me like a child!" I said. "I'm not a child any longer, and it's time you should know it. And standing staring at Mr. Russell as if you were out of your wits!"
"That—puppy!" said he, and the words came in a smothered fury, not against me but against Mr. Russell. I think he was angry with me too, though only a sort of dull sore anger. "How much do you know about that—puppy!—eh, Kitty?—with his airs and graces! And nobody in the village ever set eyes on him nor heard of him till to-day!"
"I know more than you do," I said. "Calling him names won't make me think any worse of him nor any better of you."
"That's not calling him names. He is a puppy," says Rupert. "With his oiled hair and his put-on manners and his conceit! D'you think I don't know his sort at first sight?"