At first I wasn't even sure that I liked her. She was so different: but gradually I discovered that in this difference lay her mysterious elusive charm.
Little blue-gowned Fiammetta, always quaint, always picturesque, always and entirely unexpected. At first her somewhat superior and grown-up attitude irritated us extremely, but very soon we found that this was but a thin veneer acquired by much contact with grown-up people of a type we seldom saw. Beneath it was the child, a veritable child—whimsical, imaginative affectionate, ever-various—with a power of suggesting and carrying through new and fascinating forms of play that even Paul could not equal, Paul who had imagination enough to stock ten families.
But we regarded the vagaries of our younger brother with suspicion and some scorn. He was so young. What is eight compared to eleven? And Harry, now alas! exiled at a preparatory school, was twelve. Harry, my guide, philosopher and friend, reft from me for long periods of the year.
We had seen her once since last summer—just once, in the Christmas holidays, when Harry, Paul and I, in charge of Miss Goodlake, our governess, went for two long, crowded, glorious days to London. We stayed out at Hampstead, where Mr. Glyn had taken a house that Fiammetta might as a day-girl go to a nice school there.
But when you are seeing things all day long you can't seem to see people, and Fiammetta herself was swamped in a sea of other wonders and impressions.
Now she was really coming back and I should get some good of her.
And the very week she came back we had to go from Friday to Monday to stay with Uncle Edward and Aunt Alice over at Elcombe House.
I never wanted to go there, and desired it less than ever just then; but Aunt Alice is mother's sister and it had been arranged for weeks, and when mother suggested that I couldn't go because Fiammetta was coming, they invited her too with the utmost cordiality. So there was no getting out of it.
As it happened, it proved a more amusing visit than usual.
"What's the matter with them, Janey, that you groan so?" Fiammetta asked that Friday morning. "Don't you like your cousins?"