Errand-boys stood still and whistled after them. Tradesmen followed them in their carts, offering to race them and grinning ridicule. Very frequently insult set itself to the words of a street song then in fashion:
“It won’t be a stylish marriage;
For I can’t afford a carriage;
But you’ll look sweet with your two little feet
On a tricycle made for two.”
What did Peter care? Ill-nature failed to touch him. Little boys who pulled faces at him from the pavements, made long noses at him or stuck out their tongues, did it in envy. He wished he could take them too. So he and Kay turned their heads and threw back laughter. It was fun—all fun. And then there was the anticipation of lunch; two shillings between two people can buy so much.
Shortly after Jolly Butcher’s Hill the country began. At Southgate they would stop to see their cousins. Riska affected to despise their means of traveling. She was shooting up into a tall girl, like her mother; she was darkly handsome and carried herself with a gipsy slouch. Jehane’s philosophy, of teaching her girls how to catch men, was already beginning to take effect. Outside the cottage-gate she had a little table from which she sold ginger-beer to Cockney cyclists. She did it to make pocket-money; even as a child, by this means of introduction she gathered about her a group of boy-lovers. She was learning early how to attract when she cared. Her mother was pleased by her foolish conquests—in the rose-scented air of the cottage garden they seemed very guileless and humorous. In the presence of men, whatever their years, Riska invariably tried to fascinate.
“It’s an instinct with her, the little puss,” said Barrington; “she even tries to make love to her old uncle.”
It was a subject for laughter in the family.
On these short visits Kay and Peter saw hardly anything of Glory—she was doing the work. Just as they were going she would come out from the kitchen, untying her apron, or would pop her head out of a bedroom window to shake a duster and smile at them. Then, as the pedals began to turn, Riska would sing half-tauntingly, and Eustace and Moggs would join in with her pipingly: