"Hadn't you your mackintosh on?" asked Vicky.
"My mackintosh! It's in rags. I should have had a new one ages ago."
"Geoff! I'm sure it can't be so bad. You've not had it a year."
"A year. No one wears a mackintosh for a year. The buttons are all off, and the button-holes are burst."
"I'm sure they can be mended. Martha would have done it if you'd asked her," said Vic, resolving to see to the unhappy mackintosh herself. "I know poor mamma doesn't want to spend any extra money just now."
"There's a great deal too much spent on Elsa and Frances, and all their furbelows," said Geoff, in what he thought a very manly tone. "Here, Vicky, help me to pull off my boots, and then I must climb up to the top of the house to change my things."
Vicky knelt down obediently and tugged at the muddy boots, though it was a task she disliked as much as she could dislike anything. She was rewarded by a gruff "Thank you," and when Geoff came down again in dry clothes, to find the table neatly prepared, and his little sister ready to pour out his tea, he did condescend to say that she was a good child! But even though his toast was hot and crisp, and his egg boiled to perfection, Geoff's pleasanter mood did not last long. He had a good many lessons to do that evening, and they were lessons he disliked. Vicky sat patiently, doing her best to help him till her bedtime came, and he had barely finished when Frances brought a message that he was to come upstairs—mamma said he was not to work any longer.
"You have finished, surely, Geoff?" she said, when he entered the drawing-room.
"If I had finished, I would have come up sooner. You don't suppose I stay down there grinding away to please myself, do you?" replied the boy, rudely.