Mother’s gentleness disarmed me, as it always did. I felt a little ashamed of myself. Nor was I, to tell the truth, devoid of curiosity as to these newcomers. It is almost laughable to find how, in a temporarily restricted life, such as one leads at a quiet watering-place, one’s dormant love of gossip and inquisitiveness about one’s neighbours assert themselves!
Yes, there they were! I “spotted” them at once, as Moore would have said, when we entered the long dining-room, where supper was served at separate tables to each little party, and in my heart I at once endorsed mother’s opinion. They were all so nice-looking and so happy. The elder of the two girls—for a girl she looked—I almost immediately decided must be the wife of the younger man; something indefinable in his attitude and tone towards her suggesting a husband rather than a brother. The father, an elderly man, with grey hair, and delicate, somewhat wasted features, whose expression told of much sorrow, past rather than present, was not the least attractive of the quartette; his face lighted up with a charming smile when he spoke to or glanced at his daughters, both of whom, as mother had said, were decidedly pretty.
No, that is not the word for the younger one; “lovely,” suits her far better, and before I had been five minutes in the same room with her, I more than endorsed mother’s opinion.
“She is perfectly sweet,” I thought to myself. “I wonder what her name is, and I wonder if we shall get to know them. I don’t know that I wish it; I am perfectly sure she would not care for me. I would just seem a sort of tomboy to her. She looks so dreadfully—just what she should look! Such dear little white hands!” and I glanced at my own brown fingers and thought of my sunburnt face, with, for almost the first time in my life, a touch of shame. After all, perhaps mamma was in the right in her advocacy of parasols and veils, and above all, gloves!
Then the sound of the voices which reached us from the newcomers’ table struck me with a sense of contrast, not altogether flattering to myself. The tones were so soft though clear, the slight laughter breaking out from time to time so gentle though gay, and entirely unaffected.
“Yes,” I replied in answer to mother’s—“Well, what do you think of them?”—as we were slowly making our way upstairs again to our own quarters, “Yes, you were quite right, mamma; they are most attractive-looking people, and the little one is the prettiest person I have ever seen. But I don’t want to get to know them! They wouldn’t care for us, at least not for me. Of course they would like you, and they would feel bound to be polite to me, which I should hate.”
Mother only smiled. She very often only smiled when I began what she called “working myself up” for no cause at all. But in her heart I think—indeed she owned to it afterwards—she was not a little pleased at the impression which she saw had already been made upon me.
“I daresay they’ll be gone by to-morrow; I hope they will,” said Moore consolingly. He was always so extraordinarily quick in perceiving any little thing that annoyed me. “I don’t see anything so wonderful about that girl,” he went on; “she is just a dressed-up sort of young lady. I am perfectly certain she can’t play cricket or ride a pony bare-back like you, Reggie.”
“I daresay not,” I said. “And I almost wish I couldn’t!” I added to myself rather ruefully.
But to-morrow came and they were not gone, nor apparently had they any intention of leaving, for we overheard them talking about excursions they were proposing to make in the neighbourhood, and the words “next week” occurred more than once.