“Miss Isabel,” said Brown, coming forward, and speaking in a stage whisper, while the stranger, with his glass in his eye, calmly contemplated all these communings from above, “if the gentleman is really a relation, I don’t think my lady would mind if you asked him to stay lunch.”
To stay lunch! This took away the children’s breath.
“It is a bore to have a man when he doesn’t belong to you,” said Roland.
“He looks a queer little beggar,” said Harry. “I don’t think I like the looks of him.”
“But he is quite nice,” said the little girls in a breath.
Then Bell suddenly gave a lamentable cry—
“Oh, you boys, it is no use even thinking of the wasps’ nest. We have all got to go to the rectory to the school-feast.”
This calamity put the little gentlemen out of their heads. The boys resisted wildly, but the girls began to think better of it, arguing that it was a party, though only a parish party. The introduction of this subject delayed the decision of the question about lunch, until at last a violent appeal from Harry—
“I say, Brown! can’t we have our dinner?” brought about a crisis.
“You go and ask him to come, Harry,” said Bell, seized with an access of shyness, and pushing her brother forward. “You are the biggest.”