“Better come down for the Christmas hols. We can show you some tobogganing then, most likely. I got some whopping great bruises on my legs last year,” was the inducement held out by Olive. “I must be off to that beastly old holiday task now, I suppose. I always put it off to the last minute. Wish I was a stew-pot like you.”
Beatrice and Bob escorted Lydia to the station.
“Well, ta-ta, and be a good girl,” said Bob patronizingly, tilting his hat rather far back on his head and smoking a cigarette that aggressively protruded from the extreme corner of his mouth, “when’s the old man going to have the decency to remember my existence? You’ve cut us all out with him with your blooming book-work. He goes in for being a bit of a brainy old bird himself, doesn’t he?”
Inured though she might be to the Senthoven vocabulary, Lydia nearly shuddered visibly at the thought of Grandpapa, had he heard his descendant’s description of him.
“Shut up, you ass,” said Beatrice, in an automatic sort of way. “Well, bye-bye, ole gurl. You’ve fixed it up with the mater about popping down again some time, I s’pose. Just come and take us as you find us, as the saying goes. Here’s your train.”
Lydia, leaning from the window of the third-class railway carriage, wondered whether to shake hands with Beatrice or not. The law of “No nonsense about us” would certainly preclude kissing, even had she felt the slightest desire to embrace her rough-haired, freckle-faced cousin, shifting from one leg to the other, her red hands thrust into the pockets of her woollen coat, and her tam o’ shanter pulled well down over one eye.
Bob was already casting glances in the direction of the refreshment room.
“Good-bye,” said Lydia, definitely deciding against putting out her hand. “And thanks so much.”
“Good heavens! Don’t start speechifying, whatever you do,” cried the Senthovens in protesting horror, both at the same moment, and as nearly as possible in the same words.
So Lydia was obliged to have recourse to that most uncomfortable form of ejaculatory conversation that appears to be incumbent upon all those who are unfortunate enough to be accompanied by their friends to the railway station.