“Oh, Elspeth, say that you are sorry,” Gavan supplicated, while he laughed. “Really, Eppie, you are savage. I feel as if you were really hurting some one. Please forgive her now; Agnes has, I am sure.”
“I hurt her because I love her and want her to be a good child. She will come to no good end when she grows up if she cannot learn to control her temper. What is it I hear you say, Elspeth?”
Elspeth, in a low, sullen voice that did not augur well for permanent amendment, whispered that she was sorry, and was led up, crestfallen, to beg Agnes’s pardon and to receive a reconciling kiss.
The table was then brought out and laid. Eppie had her small store of biscuits and raisins, and Elspeth and Agnes were sent into the garden to pick currants and flowers. To Agnes was given the task of making a nosegay for the place of each guest. There were four of these guests, bidden to the feast with great ceremony: three, pink and curly, of little individuality, and the fourth a dingy, armless old rag-doll, reverently wrapped in a fine shawl, and with a pathetic, half-obliterated face.
“Very old and almost deaf,” Eppie whispered to Gavan. “Everybody loves her. She lost her arms in a great fire, saving a baby’s life.”
Gavan was entering into all the phases of the game with such spirit, keeping up Agnes’s character for an irritating perfection so aptly that Eppie forgot to wonder if his enjoyment were as real as her own. But suddenly the doorway was darkened, and glancing up, she saw her uncle’s face, long-drawn with jocular incredulity, looking in upon them. Then, and only then, under the eyes of an uncomprehending sex, did the true caliber of Gavan’s self-immolation flash upon her. A boy, a big boy, he was playing dolls with a girl; it was monstrous; as monstrous as the general’s eyes showed that he found it. Stooping in his tall slightness, as he assisted Agnes’s steps across the floor, he seemed, suddenly, a fairy prince decoyed and flouted. What would Uncle Nigel think of him? She could almost have flung herself before him protectingly.
The general had burst into laughter. “Now, upon my word, this is too bad of you, Eppie!” he cried, while Gavan, not abandoning his hold on Agnes’s arm, turned his eyes upon the intruder with perfect serenity. “You are the most unconscionable little tyrant. You kept the Grainger boys under your thumb; but I didn’t think you could carry wheedling or bullying as far as this. Gavan, my dear boy, you are too patient with her.”
Eppie stood at the table, scarlet with anger and compunction. Gavan had raised himself, and, still holding Agnes, looked from one to the other.
“But she hasn’t bullied me; she hasn’t wheedled me,” he said. “I like it.”
“At your age, my dear boy! Like doll-babies!”