I could see that the others were feeling just like me, and I knew we could not go on like this till tea-time. And yet I didn’t see any other way to go on in. It was Hilda who cut the Gorgeous knot at last. She said:
‘Hugh, let you and I go and make a lovely surprise for Rupert and Sidney.’
And before I could think of any way of stopping them without being downright rude to our new cousin, they had fled the scene, just like any old conspirators. Rupert—me, I mean—was left alone with the stranger. I said:
‘Is there anything you’d like to do?’
And he said, ‘No, thank you.’
Then neither of us said anything for a bit—and I could hear the others shrieking with laughter in the hall.
I said, ‘I wonder what the surprise will be like.’
He said, ‘Yes, I wonder’; but I could tell from his tone that he did not wonder a bit.
The others were yelling with laughter. Have you ever noticed how very amused people always are when you’re not there? If you’re in bed—ill, or in disgrace, or anything—it always sounds like far finer jokes than ever occur when you are not out of things.
[p210]
‘Do you like reading?’ said I—who am Rupert—in the tones of despair.