“You don’t want to go for a walk, dear, do you?” said Aunt Beryl, and sighed with evident relief when Mrs. Senthoven shook her head in reply.
“Grandpapa?”
“The drawing-room is good enough for me,” said Grandpapa, and Uncle George had to be called out of the dining-room again to help him up the stairs and instal him in his arm-chair by the window.
“I say, aren’t you girls coming with us?” demanded Bob rather disconsolately, leaning against the open door of the dining-room with a half-smoked cigar in his mouth.
“You’ll go too far for us,” said Lydia primly.
“Let you and me go off somewhere on our own,” struck in Olive. “I’m game for a toddle, if you are, but we don’t want the men, do we?”
“You want to talk secrets—I know you,” jeered Bob.
Lydia lifted her chin fastidiously and turned away.
Her cousins had not improved, she thought, and she was very angry when her dignified gesture inadvertently placed her beneath a beautiful bunch of mistletoe, hung in the hall by Aunt Beryl.
“Fair cop!” yelled Bob, and put his arm round her waist and gave her a sounding kiss.