'Have you a gown that covers your knees?' asked Aunt Betsy, severely.
'My new frock is awfully long. It only came from the dress-maker's last week.'
'Then you have hardly had time to grow out of it,' said Brian.
'Suppose we strain a point, Aunt Betsy, and take her. It will enable us to say, "we are seven."'
'We shall be a tremendous party,' said Miss Wendover. 'I hope Sir Vernon is a hospitable, easy-going man, and that your intimacy with him warrants such an intrusion.'
'I am taking him a cousin,' answered Brian, stealing an admiring glance at Ida; 'surely that ought to secure our welcome.'
'I hope his housekeeper has large ideas about luncheon,' said Bessie, 'or Blanche's appetite will throw her out in her calculations. If she is the sort of person who thinks a pair of ducklings and a dish of rissoles substantial fare for a large party, I pity her.'
'You're vastly witty,' said Blanche, preparing her final slice of bread and jam; 'one would think you lived upon roses and lilies, like the ascetics.'
'The poor child means aesthetes,' explained Bessie.
'Bother the pronunciation! But if people had seen you eating rabbit-pie on the barrow—why a wolf wouldn't have been in it,' concluded Blanche, who acquired her flowers of speech from the Wintonians.