“Ha, ha! I say, we are nice. Don’t you eat any pheasant at dinner, then. There’s a brace for to-night. Old Garstang shot ’em—a cruel wretch.”
Kate looked at him indignantly, and then began conversing with her uncle, while her cousin relapsed into sulky silence, and began to eat as if he were preparing for a famine to come, his mother shaking her head at him reproachfully every time she caught his eye.
The lunch at an end, Kate took her uncle’s arm and went out into the veranda with him for a few minutes as the sun was shining, and as soon as they were out of hearing Claud turned fiercely upon his mother.
“What were you shaking your head at me like that for?” he cried. “You looked like some jolly old Chinese figure.”
“For shame, my dear. Don’t talk to me like that, or I shall be very, very cross with you. And look here, Claud, you mustn’t be rough with your cousin. Girls don’t like it.”
“Oh, don’t they? Deal you know about it.”
“And there’s another thing I want to say to you. If you want to win her you must not be so attentive to that Miss Leigh.”
“Who’s attentive to Miss Leigh?” said the young man, savagely.
“You are, my dear; you quite flirted with her when she was here with her brother last night, and I heard from one of the servants that you were seen talking to her in Lower Lane on Monday.”
“Then it was a lie,” he cried, sharply. “Tell ’em to mind their own business. Now, look here, mother, you want me to marry Katey, don’t you?”