“Oh, do for goodness’ sake be quiet, Dick!” screamed Mrs. Knox. “I can’t have that noise now: I told you I had a headache. Do you hear me, then! Mina, come and take away this horrible whip.”
Mina came running at the call. Master Dicky was so much given way to as a general rule, that to thwart him seemed to his sisters something delightful. Dicky dodged out of harm’s way amongst the shrubs; and Mina was about to go after him, when some one came through the open glass-doors of what was called the garden-room.
“Here’s Arnold,” she cried.
Dr. Knox was a tall, strongly built, fair man, looking older than his four-and-twenty years. Nobody could help liking his thin face, for it was a good face, full of sense and thought, but it was not a handsome one. His complexion was sallow, and his light hair had a habit of standing up wild.
“You are home betimes,” remarked Mrs. Knox.
“Yes; there was nothing more to do,” he answered, sitting down in a rustic garden-chair. “I met James in the pony-chaise: where’s he gone?”
“Why, Arnold, don’t you know that the governess is coming this evening?” cried the second girl, Lotty, who was fanning her hot face with a cabbage-leaf. “James has gone to the station for her.”
“I forgot all about the governess,” said Dr. Knox. “Lotty, what a heat you are in!”
“We have been running races,” said the child; “and the sun was blazing.”