"Oh, go on! it isn't so bad as that," answered Raymond airily. "You ought to be jolly glad you're going to get out of that place. It's no good quarrelling over spilt milk.—Look here, will either of you do a chap a friendly turn? Can you lend me some money? I want a pound or two rather badly. Of course, I'd have got it from home, only the guv'nor's away."
Jack and Valentine shook their heads.
"Well, I wish you could," continued the other. "I'd give you a shilling in the pound interest, and pay you back for certain at the end of next month."
"I wonder how it is," said Jack to Valentine that evening as they were undressing, "that Raymond's always wanting money, and never seems to have any. His people are rich enough, and I should think they make him a good allowance."
"Of course they do," answered Valentine, "but he throws it away somehow; and he's the most selfish fellow in the world, and never spends a halfpenny on any one but himself."
Raymond was certainly no great addition to the party at Brenlands. His manners, one could well imagine, resembled those of the ferocious animal in the Fosberton crest, which capered on a sugar-stick with its tongue stuck out of its mouth, as though it were making faces at the world in general. He monopolized the conversation at table, voted croquet a bore, and spent most of his time lying under a tree smoking and reading a novel. He fell foul of Joe Crouch (who still came to do odd jobs in the garden) over some trifling matter, calling him an impudent blockhead, and telling Miss Fenleigh in a lofty manner that "he would never allow such a cheeky beggar to be hanging about the premises at Grenford."
"I am sick of the fellow," said Valentine to Helen that same evening. "I wish he wouldn't come here during the holidays; it spoils the whole thing."
On the following day Raymond was destined to give his cousins still more reason for wishing that he had not favoured Brenlands with a visit. At dinner he was full of a project for borrowing a gun, and having some target practice in the garden.
"I know a man living not far away who's got a nice, little, single-barrelled muzzle-loader. We might borrow it, and make some bullets, then stick up a piece of board against that hedge at the end of the long path, and have a regular shooting match."
"Oh, I don't want any guns here!" said Queen Mab. "I should be afraid that one of you might get hurt. You'd far better stick to your croquet."