“Oh dear me, no,” she said quietly, “you mistake the situation. You put it the wrong way about. Your brother is the big boy whom I have allowed to become a friend of mine!”
Esther and Mellicent gasped with amazement, while Rosalind gave a trill of laughter, and threw up her pretty white hands.
“She’s wexed!” she cried. “She’s wexed, because I called her little! I’m wewwy sowwy, but I weally can’t help it, don’t you know. It’s the twuth! You are a whole head smaller than I am.” She threw back her chin, and looked over Peggy’s head with a smile of triumph. “There, look at that, and I’m not a year older. I call you wewwy small indeed for your age.”
“I’m thankful to hear it! I admire small women,” said Peggy promptly, seating herself on a corner of the window-seat, and staring critically at the tall figure of the visitor. She would have been delighted if she could have persuaded herself that her height was awkward and ungainly, but such an effort was beyond imagination. Rosalind was startlingly and wonderfully pretty; she had never seen anyone in real life who was in the least like her. Her eyes were a deep, dark blue, with curling dark lashes, her face was a delicate oval, and the pink and white colouring, and flowing golden locks, gave her the appearance of a princess in a fairy tale rather than an ordinary flesh-and-blood maiden. Peggy looked from her to Mellicent, who was considered quite a beauty among her companions, and, oh dear me! how plain, and fat, and prosaic she appeared when viewed side by side with this radiant vision! Esther stood the comparison better, for, though her long face had no pretensions to beauty, it was thoughtful and interesting in expression. There was no question which was most charming to look at; but if it had come to choice of a companion, an intelligent observer would certainly have decided in favour of the vicar’s daughter. Esther’s face was particularly grave at this moment, and her eyes met Peggy’s with a reproachful glance. What was the matter with the girl this afternoon? Why did she take up everything that Rosalind said in that hasty, cantankerous manner? Here was an annoying thing—to have just given an enthusiastic account of the brightness and amicability of a new companion, and then to have that companion come into the room only to make snappish remarks, and look as cross and ill-natured as a bear! She turned in an apologetic fashion to Rosalind, and tried to resume the conversation at the point where it had been interrupted by Peggy’s entrance.
“And I was saying, we have ever so many new things to show you—presents, you know, and things of that kind. The last is the nicest of all: a really good big camera with which we can take proper photographs. Mrs Saville—Peggy’s mother—gave it to us before she left. It was a present to the schoolroom, so it belongs equally to us all, and we have such fun with it. We are beginning to do some good things now, but at first they were too funny for anything. There is one of father where his boots are twice as large as his head, and another of mother where her face has run, and is about a yard long, and yet it is so like her! We laughed till we cried over it, and father has locked it away in his desk. He says he will keep it to look at when he is low-spirited.”
Rosalind gave a shrug to her shapely shoulders.
“It would not cheer me up to see a cawicature of myself! I don’t think I shall sit to you for my portrait, if that is the sort of thing you do, but you shall show me all your failures. It will amuse me. You will have to come up and see me vewwy often this winter, for I shall be so dull. We have been abroad for the last four years, and England seems so dark and dweawy. Last winter we were at Cairo. We lived in a big hotel, and there was something going on almost every night. I was not out, of course, but I was allowed to go into the room for an hour after dinner, and to dance with the gentlemen in mother’s set. And we went up the Nile in a steamer, and dwove about every afternoon, paying calls, and shopping in the bazaars. It never rains in Cairo, and the sun is always shining. It seems so wonderful! Just like a place in a fairy tale.” She looked at Peggy as she spoke, and that young person smiled with an air of elegant condescension.
“It would do so to you. Naturally it would. When one has been born in the East, and lived there the greater part of one’s life, it seems natural enough, but the trippers from England who just come out for a few months’ visit are always astonished. It used to amuse us so much to hear their remarks!”
Rosalind stared, and flushed with displeasure. She was accustomed to have her remarks treated with respect, and the tone of superiority was a new and unpleasing experience.
“You were born in the East?”