“Bee, chuck me my pipe,” from Bob.
No Senthoven ever listened to any piece of information not directly bearing upon their own immediate personal interests.
“No fear! What a slacker you are, Bob! Why don’t you get up off that sofa? Lydia’s shocked at your ways.”
“She’s not!”
“She is!”
Lydia hoped that she showed her sense of superiority by contributing nothing to the discussion, which continued upon the simple lines of flat assertion and contradiction until Bob flung a cushion at his sister’s head.
Beatrice thereupon hurled herself on him with a sort of howl.
“Don’t make so much noise; you’ll disturb father. Bee, you really are too old to romp so—your hair is nearly coming down.”
It came quite down before Beatrice had finished pommelling her brother, and Uncle Robert had waked, and said that it was too bad that a man who’d been working hard all the week couldn’t read the paper in peace and quiet for five minutes in his own house without being disturbed by all this horse-play.
Lydia watched her cousins, despised them very thoroughly indeed, and was more gratified than humiliated when Olive remarked: