"Silly!" Eustace exclaimed irritably.
"You'll see it isn't silly when I do it," said Nesta gloomily. "I shall tell father and mother everything about how horrid it is for us, and then if they won't take us home—"
She stopped dramatically, leaving Eustace to fill in the threat for himself.
"You really will tell mother, and spoil everything for her?" he asked in a low, angry tone.
Nesta nodded defiantly.
"Then you are a little beast," said Eustace furiously—"a cruel little beast."
Nesta rose with her nose very high in the air.
"Thank you," she said; "you are most awfully polite. I shall take care not to tell you anything ever again."
Eustace knelt up on the seat, and leant out of the open window into the soft evening air. He was too angry to speak coherently, too bewildered to know what to say. With a toss of her head Nesta turned and left him.
He heard her determined footsteps die away down the gallery, and knew he was meant to understand he had her sincerest disapproval. A few months earlier, he would presently have thrown off his sense of irritation and laughed at Nesta's little airs of importance. To-night he had no heart for the funny side of it. He was vexed to have lost his influence over Nesta, and worried at the thought of what an upset her headstrong course would make. Let alone his mother's disappointment, there would be the grandparents' indignation to reckon with, and Herbert's and Brenda's scornful surprise. They would indeed think them wild Bush children, and be justified in their present attitude of cool unfriendliness.