"I beg your pardon for laughing, but you have got such a rum hat on; I suppose anything does for these lanes." Then before anyone could dare to remonstrate, he was up on the box with the reins in his hand. "Now then, Johnnie," said he to the outraged Acland, "up with you. I'm going to drive this thing—is it a calf or a mule? Or is it a cross between an elephant and a pig? I suppose you bring it down for the luggage. What sort of a show have you got in your stables, eh?"
To this ribald questioning, Acland, white with fury, made answer that the Misses Willoughbys had only one horse at present; at which the boy laughed loudly, and confided to him his opinion that "their friends must be an uncommon queer lot, for them to dare to show with such a turn-out."
This dust and ashes Acland had to swallow, watching meanwhile the stout horse, Taffy, goaded up the hills with a speed that threatened apoplexy, and dashing down them with a rattle which seemed to more than hint at broken springs.
And Elaine and her aunt sat inside, with Godfrey's portmanteau for company, and said never a word. Low as had been Miss Willoughby's expectations, little as she had been prepared to love the outcome of the Orton training, certainly this boy exceeded her severest thought; he out-heroded Herod.
Elsa was simply choked; she could not say one word. She scrambled out of the wagonette at the door with a face from which the eagerness of hope had gone, to be replaced by a burning, baleful rage. She was furious; her self-love had been cruelly wounded, and hers was not a nature to forget. Of course she said nothing to her aunts. They had never encouraged her to divulge her feelings to them, and she never did. She rushed away to her old nursery, to stamp and gesticulate in a wild frenzy of anger and hurt feeling.
Meanwhile Godfrey walked in, scowling. He had expected dulness, but nothing so terrible as this promised to be. Sulkily he ordered Venom, the bull-dog, to lie down in the hall, and stumbled into the drawing-room to shake hands, with ill-suppressed contempt, with all his step-aunts, who sat around in silent condemnation.
Miss Ellen spoke first, thinking in her kindness to set the shy boy at ease.
"You will be glad of some tea after your long journey; you must be thirsty."
"Yes, I am thirsty; but I'm not very keen on tea, thanks. I'd sooner have a B and S, if you have such a thing; or a lemon squash."
There was a dead silence.