"Now uncle Dick, you promised, you know you did, and I will be so disappointed if you don't." Blondine's pretty red lips are curled up in a naughty pout, and her red cheeks are two or three degrees redder than their wont.
"People have said I could find a nicer, prettier place, and, my dear, I intend to settle this matter myself," decidedly.
"All right, uncle Dick, if you do not you will be sorry, now mind."
Blondine takes her place at the foot of the long table, and makes much unnecessary clatter among the fragile cups and saucers. Uncle Dick goes on calmly eating his tapioca pudding; he enjoys exciting Blondine's anger, but this time he wants her to understand that he knows his own business best. He thinks that at his time of life he knows where to or where not to build a house for the summer. Blondine, during her visit to Dolores, had found the most delightful spot, to her mind, for them to settle on; but some one had told uncle Dick that the place was the dullest hole he ever had occasion to poke his nose into. And if there was anything uncle Dick hated, it was a place where there was not something always on the move, to enliven things up once in a while.
Blondine toys with her napkin ring; she is too cross to finish her dinner; sometimes uncle Dick tries to see just how horrid he can act.
"Sir Barry Traleigh is in the drawing-room, shall I show him in here sir?" the servant announces at Major Gray's elbow.
"To be sure, to be sure; fetch him in," and Blondine looks up to see Sir Barry's pleasant face entering the door.
"Now, Sir Barry, won't you try to induce uncle Dick to do as I say? You have been there, and is it not delightful?" Sir Barry strokes his silky moustache in his lazy way, and contemplates Miss Gray for a few moments in silence.
"Traleigh knows next to nothing about it at all, so how can he tell?" uncle Dick puts in hastily. He is afraid if Blondine secures Sir Barry for her side, the case will go rather hard against him.