"Oh, of course, Mrs. Redmond, whatever you say will be the thing. That isn't slang is it, Miss Amy Redmond? There's a pained expression at the corners of your mouth; but never mind, you can't deny that I've improved this summer—to beat the band;" and with this shot Martine, darting forward, laid her hand on Amy's arm.
"As an impartial judge I can say that you all have improved this summer,—at least, speaking for the three girls," said Mrs. Redmond. "Although I haven't commented on it, it has pleased me greatly to observe the rounding off of several sharp corners."
"'Speaking for the three girls,'" quoted Fritz,—"but where do we two come in? Didn't we banish ourselves when we were bid, and keep out of sight, until we heard that you had been almost destroyed by fire? Our improvement has been quite remarkable, though I don't see any one paying premiums to us; and if we had protégés whom we wished to protect we'd have to go deep into our own pockets for the wherewithal."
"Yes," added Lucian, "I was thinking of that myself. It's a good thing that we haven't found any one to be interested in."
"Oh, but you have, Lucian; at least, I have found some one for you. Don't you remember our new cousins, the Airtons? How stupid! I haven't told any one else." And hereupon, without further delay, Martine plunged into an account of the discovery that she thought that she had made—that Eunice Airton and her brother were cousins in the third or fourth degree to her and Lucian.
"I feel as if we ought to wait until we can make sure, but Lucian says that he can put his hand on the papers when he returns to Cambridge—and at any rate mamma will know. I'm awfully sorry, Prissie dear, that they are not your cousins too; but perhaps we can find a link somewhere back among the Mayflowers—just large enough to join you and Eunice."
Priscilla, not knowing what to reply to Martine's fun, wisely chose the golden mean of silence. If Martine had not said "Prissie" she might have thought her wholly in earnest.
"But oh, dear," reflected Priscilla, "I do wish that Eunice had turned out to be my cousin instead of Martine's. It doesn't seem fair that she should have everything." This thought, however, had hardly shaped itself, when Priscilla put it far from her. Martine had certainly been generous, and Priscilla, if narrow in some ways, meant never to be unjust.
Martine, however, had other things than Priscilla's attitude on her mind.
"So you see, Lucian," she concluded, "there is some one for you to help,—not that Balfour Airton wishes any one to do anything for him,—but if he's a cousin, you'd naturally want to help him save his time for study in the summer holidays."