At last she saw Aunt Jane’s trim little figure come out on the sands and make as straight for the children as she could, amid greetings and consultations, so with an exclamation, she jumped up and went over the shingle to meet them, finding an endeavour going on to make them tolerably respectable for the walk home, by shaking off the sand, and advising Val to give up her intention of dragging home a broad brown ribbon of weed with a frilled edge, all polished and shiny with wet. She was not likely to regard it as such a curiosity after a few days’ experience of Rockquay, as her new friends told her.
Kitty Varley went to the High School, which greatly modified Valetta’s disgust to it, for the little girls had already vowed to be the greatest chums in the world, and would have gone home with arms entwined, if Aunt Jane had not declared that such things could not be done in the street, and Clem Varley, with still more effect, threatened that if they were such a pair of ninnies, he should squirt at them with the dirtiest water he could find.
Valetta had declared that she infinitely preferred Kitty to Fly, and Kitty was so flattered at being adopted by the second cousin of a Lady Phyllis, and the daughter of a knight, that she exalted Val above all the Popsys and Mopsys of her present acquaintance, and at parting bestowed on her a chocolate cream, which tasted about equally of salt water and hot hand—at least if one did not feel it a testimonial of ardent friendship.
Fergus and Clement had, on the contrary, been so much inclined to punch and buffet one another, that Miss Mohun had to make them walk before her to keep the peace, and was by no means sorry when the gate of ‘The Tamarisks’ was reached, and the Varleys could be disposed of.
However, the battery must have been amicable, for Fergus was crazy to go in and see Clement’s little pump, which he declared ‘would do it’—an enigmatical phrase supposed to refer to the great peg-top-perpetual-motion invention. He was dragged away with difficulty on the plea of its being too late by Aunt Jane, who could not quite turn two unexpected children in on Mrs. Varley, and had to effect a cruel severance of Val and Kitty in the midst of their kisses.
‘Sudden friendships,’ said Gillian, from the superiority of her age.
‘I do not think you are given that way,’ said Aunt Jane.
‘Does the large family suffice for all of you? People are so different,’ added Aunt Ada.
‘Yes,’ said Gillian. ‘We have never been in the way of caring for any outsider. I don’t reckon Bessie Merrifield so—nor Fly Devereux, nor Dolores, because they are cousins.’
‘Cousins may be everything or nothing,’ asserted Miss Mohun. ‘You have been about so much that you have hardly had time to form intimacies. But had you no friends in the officers’ families?’