Dorothy found herself sitting between the two Fletchers, while Rhoda monopolized Tom, and the Sunday afternoon time, which she had looked forward to as being like a bit of home, resolved itself into an ordeal of more or less patiently bearing the quips and thrusts of Rhoda, who appeared to take a malicious pleasure in making her as uncomfortable as possible.
The affair of Professor Plimsoll’s lecture was dragged out and talked about from the point of view of Rhoda, who, perching herself on the lower step of the sundial, pretended she was Dorothy, standing up beside the professor, and repeating to him his own lecture.
Rhoda had a real gift of mimicry: the others rocked with laughter, and Dorothy, although she smarted under the lash of Rhoda’s tongue, joined in the laugh against herself, because it seemed the least embarrassing thing to do.
She felt very sore a little later when Tom, in the momentary absence of Rhoda, said to her, “It was silly of you to make such an exhibition of yourself at the lecture. No one cares for a prig. I should have thought you would have found that out long ago.”
“I could not help myself—I had to do as I was told; and, at least, I owe my place in the Sixth to having been able to remember.” Dorothy was keeping her temper under control now, although of choice she would have reached up and slapped Tom in the face for daring to take such a critical and dictatorial tone with her.
Tom shrugged his shoulders. “Every one to his taste, of course; myself, I would rather have waited until I was fit for the Sixth, than have got there by a fluke. You will find it precious hard work to keep your end up. For my own part, I would rather have been in the Upper Fifth until I was able to take my remove with credit.”
“Why, Tom, if I had been put into the Upper Fifth I should have stood no chance of the Mutton Bone,” cried Dorothy in a shocked tone.
Tom smiled in a superior and really aggravating fashion. “Going in for that, are you? Well, your folly be on your own head; you are more fond of the wooden spoon than I should be. For myself, I never attempt anything I’m not likely to achieve. You don’t catch yours truly laying himself open to ridicule; but every one to his taste. Seeing that Rhoda has come back to school for another year, it goes without saying that she will win the Mutton Bone. She is no end clever, and you won’t have much chance against her.”
“I am going to have a try, anyhow,” said Dorothy in a dogged tone; and at that moment Rhoda and Joan Fletcher came back, and the chances of any homey talk between brother and sister were over for that afternoon.
Rhoda and Tom started arguing about a certain horse that was to run at Ilkestone the following week, and Dorothy, sitting listening to Joan Fletcher’s thin voice prosing on about the merits of knife pleated frocks, wondered what her father would have said if he could have heard Tom discussing the points of racehorses as if he had served an apprenticeship in a training stable.