"Snub you?"
"Yes, you know the kind of thing. You saw that first day we met you——"
"And it hurts?"
"Yes—for mother. She still tries; she doesn't see that it's no good, and each time that she goes and calls, something happens and she comes back like she did to-day. I don't suppose they mean to be unkind—it is only that we are, you see, peculiar, and that doesn't do here. Father wears funny clothes and never sees any one, and so they think there must be something wrong——"
"It's a shame," he said indignantly.
"No," she answered, "it isn't really. It's one's own fault—only sometimes I hate it all. Why couldn't we have stayed in London? We had friends there, and father's clothes didn't matter. Here such little things make such a big difference"—which was, Harry reflected, a complete epitome of the life of Pendragon.
"I'm not whining," she went on. "We all have things that we don't like, but when you're without a friend——"
"Not quite," he said; "you must count me." He stopped for a moment. "You will count me, won't you?"
"You realise what you are doing," she said. "You are entering into alliance with outcasts."
"You forget," he answered, "that I, also, am an outcast. We can at least be outcasts together."