The whole table except Molly and her aunt were too convulsed to offer the former any aid.
Molly sat and stared into her plate, the fiery red of face and neck refusing to die down. In books, she reflected miserably, the aunts always wore spectacles.
After luncheon, when Denis had gone back to the bank, Nell tried to go on with a painting she was doing of Mrs. Barclay's tabby cat.
"To think that I should have come to cats! To be so hard up for models that I have to seek refuge in a cat! Oh, what a great, stupid, moon face you've got, Tim! K.K., come here. You needn't be jealous, my dear. You're worth all the cats in the world."
Kate Kearney refused to budge. She sat in a corner, her back to the room. It was her way of showing dignified disapproval. Denis called it sulks. Poor K.K.—she had been called sternly to order when she teased the cat. No one seemed to object to the cat's swearing at her. Very well. It was an unjust world. She sat and presented the room with a beautiful black shiny back and long drooping ears.
For no obvious reason, except that it was a horrid day, somehow, and horrid things seemed to come naturally into one's mind, Nell fell to worrying over Denis and his ideas on the lottery question. He often teased her on the subject, declaring that though he had not gone in for any more just yet, he was working it all out in his mind, and would be a millionnaire some day, in spite of her.
"Oh, K.K., let's go out! Cats are too much for me! So are studies to-day."
A quiver tingled all along that sedate little black back.
Nell laughed. "Very well, we'll go without her, won't we, Sheila Pat? We'll go for a walk—a walk! Good-bye, Kate Kearney!"
It was too much for her dignity or her sulks. With a frenzied howl she hurled herself on them.