The children were ready in a few minutes, and presented a strong contrast, as usual.
Dorothy was a little too smart in her pale blue cashmere with grebe trimming, and it was hard to believe she had been in the train all night; for they had left Paris in the morning of the preceding day, and had reached San Remo at half-past ten. Irene, on the contrary, looked travel-worn, and she was a good deal more tired than Dorothy, who had slept off her fatigue and her sorrow for poor Nino's loss, and looked—so Ingleby said to herself—"as fresh as any daisy."
When the two little girls reached the sitting-room, which, like Lady Burnside's, opened on a verandah, they heard voices outside, and presently a boy and a girl stepped into the room.
Ella shrank back, but Willy, who never knew what shyness meant, said,—
"Grannie said we might come and fetch Irene—she is to come home now, if she is ready."
As Willy surveyed the two girls, he wondered which was his cousin. The thought passed through his mind, "I hope it is the pretty one!" and advancing, he said to Dorothy,—
"Grannie has sent us to take you to the Villa Lucia; are you ready?"
Ingleby, who was busy looking after the travelling basket, from which she was taking some of Dorothy's favourite biscuits, said,—
"Your cousin, Miss Packingham, had better take her dinner before she goes with you; perhaps you will sit down with her and Miss Dorothy. Now, my dear," Ingleby continued, addressing Dorothy, "I hope you will be able to fancy something," as Stefano brought in a tray with coffee and crescent-shaped rolls, and a dainty omelette done to a turn by his wife.
Willie now put his hand out to Irene, and said, in a tone in which there was a little ring of disappointment,—