Put crudely like that, it sounded rather bad. I hedged.
"I like them well enough, but I hate going there, to stay. It's so stiff somehow, everything's always arranged for one—you'll see."
"I like Teddy," Lucy announced—plump, placid Lucy, who had come into our room in nurse's wake while she packed our things for Sunday. "I love Teddy," Lucy continued, "he and me's both five."
"If," nurse remarked severely, "you was a bit more like your cousins, Miss Janey, it would be better for all parties. Very nicely brought-up young ladies they are, and full of accomplishments."
That was it. They were so full of accomplishments. Hermy (her name was Hermione), only a year my senior, was already learning to paint in oils and studied Italian. Viola, eighteen months younger, could play quite difficult music and danced by herself at tea-parties, clad in classic draperies. Teddy—it was father who called him Teddy, and the name stuck, though Uncle Edward disliked it extremely—was the best of them: moon-faced, good-natured and absolutely simple, a well-meaning, quite ordinary little boy with no airs or graces. Teddy, so Harry said, was "awfully decent."
"You haven't explained," Fiammetta insisted. "What's your uncle like?"
"It's no use," I exclaimed, "I can't explain—you wait. Perhaps," I added hopefully, "you'll like him."
When Uncle Edward bought Elcombe House, only eight miles off, we children rejoiced: for now, we thought, there could be no possible reason for the "Eeny-Peenies," as we called the girls, coming to stay with us. But we had reckoned without the hospitality of the Staceys. We were everlastingly being invited to stay with them, and of two evils this was by far the greater. They were always—Uncle Edward, the two governesses, Hermy and Vi—trying to improve us, especially me.
Paul didn't fit as to age, and his temperament was, apparently, even less adaptable than mine. Whenever Paul went, there was trouble. Lucy and Teddy were the best of friends, but nurse and the Staceys' nurse couldn't hit it off at all. Harry was safe at school, therefore the lot generally fell upon me to go ... and I hated it.
This time I felt it would not be so bad because Fiammetta was there, and Fiammetta was capable of holding her own with dozens of Staceys.