"Not exactly," said Herbert. "I jolly well hope you won't try; it would be beastly bad form. Of course if one had a fellow staying in the house one might have to explain."
"I simply couldn't ask any one," Brenda said. "It would be all over the school next term my uncle was a common labourer, and my cousins savages—or something!"
"Nice sort of friends you seem to have," said Herbert. "Is that a girl's usual way?"
"Well," said Brenda, with some asperity, "boys aren't any better, if you should have to explain matters to a chum of yours."
"That's different," Herbert said; "one doesn't want to give a bad impression. What I hope is that Eustace isn't an awful little muff. I expect he is, though—can't help being when he has never been amongst any boys. It will have to be knocked out of him."
"Aunt Dorothy said he was a very nice little chap," Brenda quoted, and then her voice broke, so that she could not go on.
It was the beginning of the summer holidays, and both she and Herbert were feeling the death of Miss Chase most dreadfully. It had been bad enough when she left before the end of the winter holidays. Again at Easter the dullness of the house without her had known no bounds. But now, when they knew she would never be with them again, her very name choked them; they could scarcely speak of her, because her absence proved at every turn all that her presence had meant to them and to every one. How they had hated Australia when she left! How much more they hated it now and everything to do with it—even the coming of the cousins! Australia seemed the root of all evil—the cause of Aunt Dorothy's death.
"Aunt Dorothy was a brick," said Herbert jerkily; "she saw niceness in people whatever they were like. But girls don't really know when fellows are muffs."
"I don't know about Eustace," said Brenda, "but Nesta looked fearfully long-legged and queerly dressed in those snapshots Aunt Dorothy did."
"I hope she won't want to kiss me when she says 'How-do-you-do,'" said Herbert; "that is all I mind about her. But if that kid Eustace fancies he is going to hang around with me perpetually, he will find himself mistaken. I couldn't be bothered."