Bab put down her teacup. Her uncle's voice not only was querulous; it had in it, for some reason, a note of mocking accusation. Varick, to be sure, was acquainted with the Lloyds; but the uncle's queries had behind them, she saw, more than a mere social interest. Nor was that all! While the man was plying her with his questions her aunt, she was conscious, was studying her with scrutinous attention. Phryne before the Areopagus could not have felt more challenged; and her wonder rising, her discomfort keeping pace with it, she was parrying her uncle's cross-examination when of a sudden there was an interruption.
"Good morning!" cried a cheerful voice. "Merry Christmas, everyone!"
Bab, as she looked round, breathed a sigh of relief.
The smiling, boyish fellow who stood there, framed for a moment in the doorway, Bab, in the months to come, was destined to know better than any man she yet had met. Her interest in him was instant. In age he was perhaps twenty-eight, and he was slight of figure, with crisp, reddish-brown hair, an animated face, and shrewd, kindly gray eyes, deep-set and expressive. Gentle, one saw he was, but in that gentleness was nothing weak, nothing effeminate. In David Lloyd—Peter Beeston's grandson—the strength, the character, that had skipped Beeston's own children again had made itself evident. As she looked at him a swift, sudden stab of pity pierced Bab to the core. Crutches supported him. He was a hopeless cripple.
He came forward swiftly, skillfully guiding himself along the treacherous hardwood floor, and his face was lighted with pleasure. "This is Bab, isn't it?" he smiled; and propping himself on the crutches, he held out a welcoming hand. Of his heartiness she saw she need have no fear; and shyly responsive, she gave him her hand. The clasp of his cool, strong fingers was singularly friendly, reassuring, too; and though the telltale color again flew its pennons in her face, this time it signaled only pleasure.
"Think of it!" he laughed. "A week ago I didn't even dream I had a cousin!" Then he gave her a sly, whimsical look: "Much less such a good-looking one!"
Bab felt her spirits rise mercurially. He pulled out a chair and, teetering perilously for an instant on his crutches, made ready to sit down. Bab caught swiftly at her breath.
"Let me help!" she exclaimed, and half rose from her chair; but the cripple shook his head.
"Don't bother," he chuckled lightly; "I always manage somehow. There now!" he added as he lowered himself to the chair. One might have thought from it that the affliction that had maimed him for life was merely a day's disability. "Now don't mind me," he directed, "just you finish your breakfast!"