‘There’s something amiss!’ said the good-natured, puzzled uncle. ‘What is it? I should have thought you would have got on with these young folks like—like a house on fire.’
‘That’s all you know about it,’ thought Dolly. What she said was, ‘One never does.’
‘I don’t understand that generalization,’ answered her uncle; then, as she did not answer, he added, ‘I am sure your Aunt Lily is very anxious to make you happy. Have you anything to complain of?’
‘No,’ said Dolores, ‘I don’t complain of anything.’
She was thinking of Valetta’s notion that she wanted to ‘make up stories of them,’ and therefore she said it in a manner which conveyed that she had a good deal to complain of, if she would, though really she would have been a good deal puzzled to produce a grievance that a man like Uncle Reginald would understand, though she had plenty for sympathy like Constance’s.
However, it was not to be expected that a private conference should last long in that house, and Mysie appeared at that moment, looking for her cousin, to say that ‘Mamma was ready for her.’ Dolores went off with more alacrity than usual, and Uncle Reginald beckoned up his other niece, and observed: ‘I say, Mysie, what’s the matter with Dolly?’
‘She is always like that, uncle,’ answered Mysie.
‘Don’t you hit it off with her, then?’
‘I can’t, uncle,’ said Mysie, looking up, with a sudden wink now and then to stop her tears. ‘I thought we should have been such friends; but she won’t let me. I didn’t mean to be stupid and disagreeable, like the girls in ‘Ashenden Schoolroom,’ but she doesn’t care for anybody but Miss Constance and Maude Sefton.’
‘I hope you are all very kind to her,’ said Uncle Reginald, rather wistfully.