“I’m afraid,” she began, “I’m afraid—and yet I should not speak of it that way; it is not kind. But I did so ask them to give us notice of his coming.” She had left the room almost before she had finished speaking. The children looked at each other.
“I say, Mavis,” said Ruby, “it’s Bertrand! Don’t you think we might run out and see?”
“No,” Mavis replied decidedly, “certainly not. Cousin Hortensia would have told us to come if she had wanted us.”
But they went to the open door and stood close beside it, listening intently. Then came the sound of old Joseph’s steps along the stone passage from the part of the house which he and Bertha—Joseph was Bertha’s husband—inhabited, then the drawing back of the bolts and bars, and, most interesting and exciting of all, a noise of horses stamping and shaking their harness as if glad to have got to the end of their journey. Then followed voices; and in a minute or two the children heard Miss Hortensia coming back, speaking as she came.
“You must be very cold, my dear boy, and hungry too,” she was saying. “We are just beginning tea, so you had better come in at once as you are.”
“It’s terribly cold, and that fool of a driver wouldn’t come any faster; he said his horses were tired. I wish I could have got a cut at them—what are horses for?” was the reply to Miss Hortensia’s kind speech.
Mavis touched Ruby.
“Come in. Cousin Hortensia wouldn’t like to see us standing at the door like this,” she said.
They sat down at their places again, only getting up as Miss Hortensia came in.
She was followed by a boy. He was about the height of the twins, broad and strong-looking, wrapped up in a rich fur-lined coat, and with a travelling cap of the same fur still on his head. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed, a handsome boy with a haughty, rather contemptuous expression of face—an expression winch it did not take much to turn into a scowl if he was annoyed or put out.