“We are roaring at you, mother,” called Ursula, helplessly following after her parents.
Mrs Brangwen turned round with a slightly puzzled, exasperated look. “Oh indeed!” she said. “What is there so very funny about me, I should like to know?”
She could not understand that there could be anything amiss with her appearance. She had a perfect calm sufficiency, an easy indifference to any criticism whatsoever, as if she were beyond it. Her clothes were always rather odd, and as a rule slip-shod, yet she wore them with a perfect ease and satisfaction. Whatever she had on, so long as she was barely tidy, she was right, beyond remark; such an aristocrat she was by instinct.
“You look so stately, like a country Baroness,” said Ursula, laughing with a little tenderness at her mother’s naive puzzled air.
“Just like a country Baroness!” chimed in Gudrun. Now the mother’s natural hauteur became self-conscious, and the girls shrieked again.
“Go home, you pair of idiots, great giggling idiots!” cried the father inflamed with irritation.
“Mm-m-er!” booed Ursula, pulling a face at his crossness.
The yellow lights danced in his eyes, he leaned forward in real rage.
“Don’t be so silly as to take any notice of the great gabies,” said Mrs Brangwen, turning on her way.
“I’ll see if I’m going to be followed by a pair of giggling yelling jackanapes—” he cried vengefully.