Tib got red at this, and looked as if she were going to cry. But I didn't feel inclined to be put down like that, before a stranger, too.
"No, grandpapa; it's not an unwelcome surprise, but we would have liked to have been tidier; you know we generally are quite tidy when you see us."
"For my part, I prefer to see small people when they're not very tidy," said a pleasant, hearty voice; and then the owner of it came round from the other side of the dog-cart where he had jumped down. "You must introduce me, Mr. Ansdell, please, to my—small, I was going to say, but I'm surprised to see the word would be almost a libel—cousins."
"Umph," said grandpapa, "'cousins,' in the Scotch sense; how many degrees removed, it would be difficult to say."
"I've not been taught to count you so very far away," said the gentleman, good-humouredly, but with something in his tone that showed he wasn't the sort of person to be very easily put down; "besides, sir, as I'm your godson as well as your cousin——"
"I might be a little more civil, eh, Charles?" said grandpapa, laughing a little. "Ah, well, I'm too old to learn, I fear. Nevertheless, I have no objection to your calling each other cousins if you choose. Mercedes, Gustava, and Gerald—your cousin, Mr. Charles Truro."
We looked at him, and he looked at us. What we saw was a well-made, pleasant-looking young man, not very tall, though not short, with merry-looking grey eyes, close cut brown hair, and a particularly kindly expression, a great improvement upon most of grandpapa's gentlemen friends, who never looked at us as if they saw us.
"Mercedes and Gustava," he repeated, slowly. "I thought one of them was called Re——"
But grandpapa interrupted him.
"Mercedes is an absurd name for an English child," he said. "It was a fancy of poor Gerald's—they were in Spain, you know."