A tall, fair boy, Gregory’s younger cousin, who had come over from Annistair with his mother, met them in the hall disconsolately.
“I say,” he complained, “I think Uncle Henry has been most unfair. We are all waiting to play tennis with you, Miss Endacott. No one will play another set until you come. Gregory is fuming, the tea is cold, and Mother is quite convinced that you have fallen down an oubliette—there is one somewhere about the place, you know. You’re in disgrace, Uncle Henry, I can tell you!”
They all strolled out on to the lawn, and Claire made her apologies at the tea table.
“Please remember my transatlantic weaknesses,” she begged. “A house like this is more wonderful than any museum. It is just illuminating.—No tea, thanks. Some lemonade and one of those cakes.”
Sir Bertram, who had been playing a single at tennis, shook his racket at his brother.
“Henry,” he declared, “you are sent to Coventry. I appointed you showman with considerable self-sacrifice, and gave you half an hour. You have been away for an hour and a quarter.”
“And we haven’t finished yet,” Claire insisted. “I have had the most interesting afternoon of my life. I don’t believe there is another house like Ballaston in the world.”
“Did you bring home any treasures from China, Gregory?” his cousin asked him. “What is that horrible-looking wooden Image in Uncle Henry’s room?”
“That’s about the only treasure I did bring home,” was the somewhat grim reply. “Worth about a million, I believe, if you knew how to handle him.”
“A most unprepossessing-looking object, my dear Gregory,” his aunt observed. “It may be valuable—I hope for your sake it is, if you didn’t give much for it—but as an ornament it is absolutely repulsive.”