"Run and get ready now, dear! We mustn't be long. Mildred and I are going to put on our hats and coats. You'll wait here for us, Diccon, won't you?"
The girls walked away with their extraordinary foreign guest, and Diccon remained in the gun-room in a very dejected and disconsolate frame of mind. He would have "done a bolt", but he did not care to risk offending the Lorraines. He was accustomed to Violet's autocratic ways, and knew that she would not forgive him if he refused to fall in with her wishes. Yet his very hair rose on end at the idea of going out for the afternoon and evening in the company of this New Zealand damsel, to whom he was expected to pay so much attention.
"I don't know how the Lorraines can stand it," he thought. "If I had such a cousin thrust on me, I'd die of shame."
So far from seeming ashamed of her outlandish relation, Violet evidently regarded her with the utmost complacency. Rata herself did not seem to realize that her appearance was singular; perhaps, indeed, she considered it more pleasing than that of her European friends, and was longing to suggest tattooing as an aid to beauty. Nevertheless, that Diccon, a member of his school cricket team and the winner of three silver cups, should be required to play tennis and to dance with this indescribable savage was an outrage on his feelings. Why, he would be a laughing-stock! If anyone else would take the first turn with her, he would not mind quite so much, but to make a start! Oh, it was sickening! He would have shammed illness if there had been the slightest chance of being believed. If he did not look pale, he looked decidedly sulky as Violet came downstairs into the hall.
"Here we are!" she said sweetly. "I'm afraid we've kept you waiting a little. You see, it took rather a long time to change Rata's dress. She decided, after all, that she wouldn't go to the Tracys in Maori costume."
Diccon turned, and could not restrain a gasp of surprise. Instead of the extraordinary native, Violet and Mildred were accompanied by a very pretty and elegantly-dressed girl of their own age, whose brown eyes were gazing at him with politely restrained amusement. Not a trace of tattoo marks upon that white forehead or those rose-leaf cheeks. The ear-rings were gone, also the magenta scarf, and her brown hair was tied at the back with a white ribbon.
"Good night!" exclaimed Diccon, subsiding weakly into a chair.
Then the three girls exploded, and laughed till they grew almost hysterical.
"It serves you right, Diccon!" gurgled Violet. "We've paid you out for the trick you played on Mildred at the Keep. Oh, I never thought we'd take you in so well. You believed every word, and looked so deliciously dumbfounded."
"Well, I'd heard before that Lady Lorraine's uncle had married a New Zealander," retorted Diccon.