She crossed the room, flung herself into a deep straw armchair in front of a blazing log fire, and took up a magazine.
“It is all horrid,” she continued as she rapidly turned the pages; “you know it, Miss Sinclair, as well as I do.”
“If I were you,” said Miss Sinclair, “I should be proud—very proud—to belong to an old family who had kept a custom like this in vogue.”
“If you belonged to the old family you would not,” said Audrey. “Every one laughs at us. I call it perfectly horrid. What possible good can it do that all the people of the neighborhood, and the strangers who come to stay in the town, should make free of Wynford Castle on New Year’s Day? It makes me cross anyhow. I am sorry to be cross to you, Miss Sinclair; but I am, and that is a fact.”
Miss Sinclair sat down on another chair.
“I like it,” she said after a pause.
“Why?” asked Audrey.
“There were some quite hungry people passing through the hall as I came to you just now.”
“Let them be hungry somewhere else, not here,” said the angry girl. “It was all very well when some ancestor of mine first started the custom; but that father, a man of the present day, up-to-date in every sense of the word, should carry it on—that he should keep open house for every individual who chooses to come here on New Year’s Day—is past endurance. Last year between two and three hundred people dined or supped or had tea at the Castle, and I believe, from the appearance of the avenue, there will be still more to-day. The house gets so dirty, for one thing, for half of them don’t think of wiping their feet; and then we run a chance of being robbed, for how do we know that there are not adventurers in the throng? If I were the country-folk I would be too proud to come; but they are not—not a bit.”
“I cannot agree with you,” said Miss Sinclair. “It is a splendid old custom, and I hope it will not be abolished.”