"Is your little brother here as well?" said Sir Julian, gazing distastefully through his eye-glasses at Ruthie, heated, breathless, hopping persistently on one leg, and with a general air of having escaped from the supervision of whoever might have charge of her morning toilette before that toilette had received even the minimum of attention. Ruthie cast a look of artless surprise about her.
"I thought he was here. He came with me—but you know how he dawdles. He may be still in the drive."
A slow fumbling at the door-handle discredited the supposition.
"There he is!" shrieked Ruthie joyfully, and violently turning the handle of the door. "Ow! I can't open the door!"
"Of course you can't, if he is holding the handle at the other side. Let go."
"He won't be able to open it himself, he never can—and besides, his hands are all sticky, I know, because he upset the treacle at breakfast. Let go, Peekaboo!" bawled his sister through the keyhole.
"H'sh—sh. Don't shriek like that, he can hear quite well."
"But he won't let go——"
"Come away from the door, Ruthie, and don't make that noise."
Lady Rossiter herself went to the door of which the handle was being ineffectually jerked from without, and said with that peculiar distinctness of utterance characteristic of exasperation kept consciously under control: