Etheldreda blushed, shuffled, and tossed her pigtail, but made not the slightest attempt to move from her place, whereat her brothers and sister chuckled with easy amusement.
“Oh, Dreda, in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light thingummy aspen made.
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
She nothing does, but makes a row.”
The mutilated lines were the contributions of the two schoolboys, while Rowena looked down her nose once more, and dismissed the subject in a few scathing remarks.
“You might realise by this time that Dreda’s sentiments have not the smallest influence on her actions! The Spider was evidently suffering from a spasm of repentance. Quite time, too! She has made herself most objectionable the last few days, sighing and groaning about the house, and looking as if her heart were broken. If we can stand breaking our engagements and giving up all the fun of the holidays, I don’t see why she need grumble. But she is always like that—unsympathetic and absorbed in herself. It’s a mystery to me, for what has she got to be absorbed in? To be old, and ugly, and poor, and to have no home or any people that count—there can’t possibly be any personal interest in life! Her only hope would be to live for others, and of that, poor dear, she is incapable!”
Rowena folded her hands on her lap, turned her well-cut profile to the window, and sighed in an elderly, forbearing fashion, at which the two boys grinned broadly, while impetuous Dreda burst once more into speech.
“Rowena, I hate you when you talk like that! Don’t be so self-righteous and horrid! It’s not for you to criticise other people. The Spider is not a patch on you for selfishness, and if she has a poor time of it, that’s all the more reason why you should be charitable, and try to cheer her up. You’ll be old yourself some day, and ugly too! Fair people always fade soonest. I read that in the toilette column of a magazine, so it’s true, and I shouldn’t wonder if you grew nut-crackery, too. Your nose is rather beaky even now. You needn’t be so proud!”
Rowena turned her head to look round the carriage with a gently tolerant smile.
“Our dear Dreda teaches us a lesson in charity, does she not?” she demanded blandly. That was all the response she deigned to make, but it was enough to reduce her sister to a crimson confusion, and to rouse Gurth to impatient anger.
“Oh, leave off nagging, you two!” he cried loudly. “If you don’t drop it, I’ll be off into a smoker at the first stop. Fight it out to-night when you are alone, if you can’t agree; but let us off when we are caged up in the same pen. Here! Let’s have a game of ‘Roadside cribbage.’ Bags I the left side! Now then, Dreda, I choose you first. Hereward can take Rowena. Buck up! We have got to win this time.”
Etheldreda shot a glance of gratitude from the grey eyes which were such eloquent exponents of her thoughts. To be so championed by Gurth was worth far more than the temporary suffering inflicted by Rowena’s sharp tongue, and she set herself valiantly to be worthy of his choice. “Roadside cribbage” was a game patronised for years by the Saxon family on their railway journeys, and consisted merely in dividing forces, staring steadily out of opposite windows, and scoring for the various objects perceived, according to a quaint but well understood method. Thus, a bridge over a river counted as five marks; a quarry, ten; a windmill, twenty; a fire, fifty; a motor car, minus one; while the ubiquitous bicycle was worth only three per dozen. These, and other objects too numerous to repeat, mounted but slowly towards the grand total of a hundred, but there remained one—just one rare chance of winning success at a stroke, for the competitor who had the luck to spy a cat looking out of a window might cry, “Game!” on the instant, even if he had not so far scored a single point. It can easily be understood that the best chances of spotting this valuable spectacle came as the train slackened steam before entering a station. Then, as one regarded the backs of dreary tenement houses, it really seemed inevitable that some household cat should wish to take the air, or to regard the world from the vantage of dusty, unwashed sills! Inevitable, yet with the perversity of cat nature, it was extraordinary how seldom this all-to-be-desired vision burst upon the view. “It’s not fair!” Rowena cried. “You have all the poor houses on your side, and poor houses have always more cats than rich ones. A cat for every floor. We ought to change sides between every station, like cricket!”