“It’s Margot! It’s Margot!” exclaimed Sybil in the wildest excitement, racing into the drawing-room with the news, while her older sister followed almost as quickly. The two grown-ups within stopped in the midst of a very earnest conversation and turned to listen, as the opening of the front door by Ann was followed by the sound of an eager voice outside.
“I’ll go right in, thank you,” said a very assured voice, and then someone opened the drawing-room door very firmly, and entered.
Sybil, and even Gretta, too, rose to their feet and gazed open-mouthed at the visitor as she embraced her mother, talking in an animated voice all the time. “Oh, mother,” she said, “I guessed, somehow, that this would be the room, and I couldn’t wait, so I just didn’t. Dad’s driven on with the car to the hotel garage, and I told him to put me down here because I wanted to see the cousins just at the very earliest minute, and——” She turned towards Gretta and Sybil with a friendly expression of countenance, and held out her hand.
This must be Margot, their cousin, of course; but, dressed as she was in a plain leather topcoat and motoring goggles, she was—to say the least of it—quite unlike the cousin of the children’s imaginings. However, when, at the suggestion of her mother, these impedimenta had been removed, the real Cousin Margot emerged.
She was taller than Sybil, whose senior she was by six months, and weedier. Her mouse-coloured hair was thick and rather short, cut straight across her forehead and tucked away behind her ears; her grey eyes looked out very straight and clear at the world from under dark eye-lashes, and her mouth was a good-humoured and a capable one. Add to this a determined, rather self-willed little chin, and you have a fairly good picture of the Australian cousin, to the making of whose acquaintance the children had been so greatly looking forward.
Both of them fell in love with her at once in their own respective ways. Sybil, talking sixteen to the dozen in no time, asking questions that needed no answers, making comments, and compelling attention; and Gretta, content to sit and watch and listen, making up her mind, nevertheless, very firmly the while.
Tea followed almost at once, and with the tea Uncle Bob arrived. It was during the course of the unusually cheery meal that the new uncle made his very unexpected announcement.
“Margot thought we’d better come over to fetch her mother back in the car after her conversation with you,” he said, addressing the doctor, “and take the chance of seeing you all at the same time. There’s plenty of room for the children, if you like to spare them to us for a day or two. We could pack them both into the back seat, and take them with us. Margot wants to have them.”
“And we’d like to have you, too, of course, you know,” remarked that damsel cheerfully, turning to her uncle with a friendly smile and nod, “only, mother says that you can’t take a holiday.”
“No, I can’t easily do that, young lady,” said the doctor, surprised and rather amused by the assured ways of his Australian niece. “But if your parents like to shoulder the responsibility, there’s no reason why your cousins shouldn’t take advantage of the offer.”