"What is it?" she asked. "Has Mr. Charley gone and sprained his other ankle?"
"Not quite so bad as that." And then her father narrated the discovery they had mutually made. Miss Dithy opened her bright brown eyes.
"Like a chapter out of a novel where everybody turns out to be somebody else. 'It is—it is—it is—my own, my long-lost son!' And so we're second cousins, and you're Charley Stuart; and Trixy—now who's Trixy?"
"Trixy's my sister. How do you happen to know anything about her?"
Edith made a wry face.
"The nights I've spent—the days I've dragged through, the tortures I've undergone, listening to you shouting for 'Trixy,' would have driven any less well-balanced brain stark mad! May I sit down? Digging in the sunshine, and rowing with Johnny Ellis is awfully hot work."
"Digging in the sunshine is detrimental to the complexion, and rowing with Johnny Ellis is injurious to the temper. I object to both."
"Oh, you do?" said Miss Darrell, opening her eyes again; "it matters so much, too, whether you object or not. Johnny Ellis is useful, and sometimes agreeable. Charley Stuart is neither one nor t'other. If I mayn't dig and quarrel with him, is there anything your lordship would like me to do?"
"You may sit on this footstool at my feet—woman's proper place—and read me to sleep. That book you were reading aloud yesterday—what was it? Oh, 'Pendennis,' was rather amusing—what I heard of it."
"What you heard of it!" Miss Darrell retorts, indignantly. "You do well to add that. The man who could go to sleep listening to Thackeray is a man worthy only of contempt and scorn! There's Mr. Ellis calling me—I must go."