“What are you two quarrelling about?” came the voice. Rather a soft voice with a thread of laziness running through it.
“Jack's too mean for anything, mother. He knows we haven't men enough without him for a cotillion, now that Garry has dropped out, and he's been just stupid enough to invite some old man to come and see him this evening.”
The furs and picture hat swept down and on, Jack standing at attention, hands clasping an imaginary musket his face drawn down to its severest lines, his cheeks puffed out to make him look the more solemn. When the wren got “real mad” he would often say she was the funniest thing alive.
“I'm a pig, I know, aunty” (here Jack completed his salute with a great flourish), “but Corinne does not really want me, and she knows it. She only wants to have her own way. They don't dance cotillions when they come here—at least they didn't last time, and I don't believe they will to-night. They sit around with each other in the corners and waltz with the fellows they've picked out—and it's all arranged between them, and has been for a week—ever since they heard Corinne was going to give a dance.” The boy spoke with earnestness and a certain tone of conviction in his voice, although his face was still radiant.
“Well, can't you sit around, too, Jack?” remarked his aunt, pausing in her onward movement for an instant. “I'm sure there will be some lovely girls.”
“Yes, but they don't want me. I've tried it too often, aunty—they've all got their own set.”
“It's because you don't want to be polite to any of them,” snapped Corinne with a twist of her body, so as to face him again.
“Now, Corinne, that isn't fair; I am never impolite to anybody in this house, but I'm tired of—”
“Well, Garry isn't tired.” This last shot was fired at random.
Again the aunt poured oil: “Come, children, come! Don't let's talk any more about it. If Jack has made an engagement it can't be helped, I suppose, but don't spoil your party, my dear. Find Parkins, Jack, and send him to me.... Ah, Parkins—if any one calls say I'll be out until six o'clock.”