Besides, he never much wanted to talk when he was eating, though he could not have explained why. So he devoted his attention chiefly to a plate of chocolate cakes, leaving the Boy-of-ten conversationally in command of the field.
He was full of a recent cricket match, and his talk bristled with such unknown phrases as "square leg," "cover point" and "caught out." But for some reason—pure perversity perhaps—they stirred in Roy no flicker of curiosity, like his father's "flair for the obvious." He didn't know what they meant—and he didn't care, which was not the least like Roy. Tara, who owned big brothers, seemed to know all about it, or looked as if she did; and to show you didn't understand what a girl understood, would be the last indignity.
When the cricket show-off was finished, Joe talked India and ragged Tara, in a big-brotherly way, ignored Christine, as if five and a half simply didn't count. That roused Roy; and by way of tacit rebuke, he bestowed such marked attention on his small sister, that Christine (who adored him, and was feeling miserably shy) sparkled like a dewdrop when the sun flashes out.
She was a tiny creature, exquisitely proportioned; fair, like her father, yet in essence a replica of her mother, with the same wing-like brows and dark limpid eyes. Dimly jealous of Tara, she was the only one of the three who relished the presence of the intruder and wished strange boys oftener came to tea.
Millicent, the nursery-maid, presided. She was tall and smiling and obviously a lady. She watched and listened and said little during the meal.
Once, in the course of it, Lilámani came in and hovered round them, filling Roy's tea-cup, spreading Christine's honey—extra thick. Her Eastern birthright of service, her joy in waiting on those she loved, had survived ten years of English marriage, and would survive ten more. It was as much an essential part of her as the rhythm of her pulses and the blood in her veins.
She was no longer the apple-blossom vision of the morning. She wore her mother-o'-pearl sari with its narrow gold border. Her dress, that was the colour of a dove's wing, shimmered changefully as she moved, and her aquamarine pendant gleamed like drops of sea water on its silver chain.
Roy loved her in the mother-o'-pearl mood best of all; and he saw, with a throb of pride, how the important Boy-from-India seemed too absorbed in watching her even to show off. She did not stay many minutes and she said very little. She was still, by preference, quiet during a meal; and it gave her a secret thrill of pleasure to see the habit of her own race reappearing as an instinct in Roy. So, with merely a word or two, she just smiled at them and gave them things and patted their heads. And when she was gone, Roy felt better. The scales had swung even again. What was a school blazer and twenty runs at cricket, compared with the glory of having a mother like that?
But if tea was not much fun, after tea was worse.
They were told to run and play in the garden; and obediently they ran out, dog and all. But what could you play at with a superior being who had made twenty runs not out, in a House Match—whatever that might be? They showed him their ring-doves and their rabbits; but he didn't even pretend to be interested, though Tara did her best, because it was she who had brought this infliction on Roy.