"What luck?" asked Oswyth, sleepily.
Rob punched and poked a pillow into shape, and looked morosely out of the window at the thunder-clouds piling up in the west, the result of the hot, sultry day.
"Oh, I barked at him. I think I shall have to see him in future; I believe I have more effect than mild Mardy and patient Patergrey," Rob said. "But, oh, I'm tired—tired of being vivacious and snappy and go-ahead. I'm tired, dead tired, of fighting, Oswyth. I'd like to lie down and be taken care of, like a little ewe lamb. There are two Robs in me; one is sneakingly cowardly, and wants only to curl up in a hole and hide; and the other says: 'S't, boy! sic 'em, Rob!' And I'm up and at it again—at fate, and hard times, and Aunt Azraella, and house-work, and Mr. Flinders, and all those horrors. And then the tired, meek Rob tears around obediently, and no one dreams it's all like thumb-screws and rack to her. I'm tired of my rôle of snapping-turtle, Wythie."
"Poor Rob!" said Oswyth, gently running her fingers in and out of Rob's beautiful, gleaming rings of hair, and stroking the mobile face, now twisting hard in its effort to laugh when the tears were very near falling.
"Don't mind me," said Rob, succeeding in forcing a feeble laugh. "I'm tired, and it's been a fearfully humid, trying, tiresome, crooked day. Besides, we're going to have a thunder-storm, and electricity always makes me sick. Don't mind me."
CHAPTER SEVEN
ITS MENACE
Miss Charlotte Grey was spending the day with her cousins. Two of August's weeks had slipped away, and the air was fresh and pleasant. It seemed to the Grey girls as if it were always refreshing weather when "Cousin Peace" came.