"Nicky! Nicky!" cried Lissa. "How late you are! And you know you promised for twelve o'clock, and we've been waiting for ages and ages!"
"Promised what?" asked Nicky.
"Oh, Nicky …!" on a wail of disgust; "you don't mean to say you've forgotten! Why, only yesterday you promised that to-day if it was fine you'd take us out in your tandem. You know you did!"
"Oh, Lord! Well, I can't, anyway. I've got an engagement."
"Nicky!" Ruth joined in the wail, but it was Lissa who passed rapidly to passion, her face crimson and her eyes full of tears of rage.
"Then you're a pig, that's what you are—a perfect pig, and I hate you! You never do what you say you will now, and I think it's very caddish of you. It's all that beastly Oxford; you've never been the same since you went there. Mother says so too. She says it's made you a conceited young puppy; I heard her!"
"Lissa!" Ishmael's voice was very angry. "Never repeat what anyone has said about anyone else—never, never. Do you hear me?"
"I don't care, she did say it, so there!"
Nicky was crimson. He went to the door. "Then it's easy to see where you get your good manners from!" he retorted, and was gone before Ishmael could say anything to him. Lissa was still trembling with rage, and Ruth, who was rather a cry-baby, lifted up her voice and wept, partly because of the disappointment and partly because she could not bear people not to be what she called "all comfy together."
Georgie Ruan heard the noise and came in briskly. Ishmael made her a despairing gesture to remove the two children.