“These are your cousins, Bertrand; your cousins Ruby and Mavis—you have heard of them, I am sure, though you have never met each other before.”
Bertrand looked up coolly.
“I knew there were girls here,” he answered. “Mother said so. But I don’t care for girls—I told mother so. I’m awfully hungry;” and he began to pull forward a chair.
“My dear,” said Miss Hortensia, “do you know you have not taken off your cap yet? You must take off your coat too, but, above all, your cap.”
Bertrand put up his hand and slowly drew off his cap.
“Mother never minds,” he said. But there was a slight touch of apology in the words.
Then, more for his own comfort evidently than out of any sense of courtesy, he pulled off his heavy coat and flung it on to a chair. The little girls had not yet spoken to him, they felt too much taken aback.
“Perhaps he is shy and strange, and that makes him seem rough,” thought Mavis, and she began drawing forward another chair.
“Will you sit here?” she was saying, when Bertrand pushed past her.
“I’ll sit by the fire,” he said, and he calmly settled himself on what he could not but have seen was her seat or Ruby’s; “and I’m awfully hungry,” he went on.