Carmel's astounding attitude, while it amazed her cousins in the extreme, was certainly highly satisfactory. The boys, when they realized that she had no desire to wrest their pets from them, waxed suddenly friendly. With the naïve impulsiveness of childhood they gave her a full account of what they had expected her to be.
"Perhaps I was rather frightened of you too, till I saw you all," she confessed. "We've none of us turned out such dreadful bogies, have we?"
"Do you know what I'm going to call you?" said Clifford, slipping a plump hand into hers, and gazing up into the shining brown eyes. "Princess Carmel!"
And Carmel bent down and kissed him.
chapter vi
Princess Carmel
In the long talk which Cousin Clare had had with Mr. and Mrs. Greville in Sicily, it had been arranged that Carmel was to be sent to school with Lilias and Dulcie at Chilcombe Hall. The new term, therefore, saw her established in a little dressing-room which led out of the Blue bedroom, and which by good luck happened to be vacated by Evie Hughes, who had left at Easter. It was soon spread over with Carmel's private possessions. They were different from the equipment of an ordinary English schoolgirl, and aroused as much interest as their owner. First there were the portraits of her mother, of her stepfather, Mr. Greville, and of the little half-brothers and sisters—Bertram, Nina, Vincent, and Luigia—taken by an Italian photographer in wonderfully artistic poses, and with classic backgrounds of pillars and palm trees. Then there were fascinating snapshots of her home, a white Sicilian house with a vine-covered veranda, and its lovely half-tropical garden with fountains and statues and pomegranate blossom, and trees hung with ripe oranges and lemons. Carmel's things seemed nearly all foreign. Her nightdress case was of drawn linen beautifully embroidered by the nuns at a convent; her work-box was of inlaid wood from Sorrento; the trinkets on her dressing-table were Italian; her clothes and shoes bore the names of Paris shops. Some of the books she had brought with her were in French; the calendar that hung on her wall held pictures of Naples and Vesuvius.
Carmel was undoubtedly a most unusual combination of two nationalities. Though in some respects she was English enough, there was a certain little gracious dignity and finish about her manners that was peculiarly southern. Clifford, with a child's true instinct, had named her "Princess." She was indeed "royal" with that best type of good breeding which gives equal courtesy to all, be it queen or beggar. In the school she was soon an immense favorite. The girls admired her attitude towards Lilias and Dulcie. If she had posed as the heiress of the Chase, they would probably have "sat upon her" thoroughly, but, as she never put forward her claims in that respect, they were disposed to show her decided consideration, all the more so as she was visibly fretting for her Sicilian home. She put a brave face on things in the day-time, but at night she would be caught crying, and her eagerness for letters was pathetic.
"Poor child! She's like an exotic plant transferred to a northern soil!" said Miss Walters. "We must try to settle her somehow. It won't do for her to go about with dark rings round her eyes. I wonder how we could possibly interest her? I don't believe our school happenings appeal to her in the least."