"You will be good to your mother, boys," said Mr. Beauchamp. He was directly appealing to Tommy, but he included the whole family in his sweeping glance. "Don't overpower her.—And, Susie, you are the eldest; you must be an example."
Susie flounced out her ridiculously short skirts with a triumphant look round. "I am a help, aren't I, mother?" she said.
"Sometimes, dear," said her mother, with rather a tired smile.
"And you won't bother about me, Christina?" he said.
"How can I help it, darling?"
She leant farther out of the window, but one hand held firmly to Amy's slim black legs—Amy had scrambled up on to the seat, and was pushing the packages in the rack here and there, searching for something.
"There is the guard; we are just off, I suppose. O Dick, how I wish you were coming too! But I will write as often as I can.—Susie, be quiet. I cannot hear myself speak."
"Well, mother," said Susie, shaking back her hair, and poking the point of her parasol between the laces of Dick's boots, "look at the way he has laced himself up; you said yourself he was to do it tidily. And his face is smutty already; look at him."
"Good-bye, Dick," said Mrs. Beauchamp. The train was moving smoothly out of the station, and she leant out as far as she dared, to get a last look at the erect figure.—"There, Susie, father is out of sight. Leave the boys alone."
Susie frowned.