Peter took his week at Newport on his way back from his regular August visit to his mother. Miss De Voe had told him casually that Dorothy would be there, and Dorothy was there. Yet he saw wonderfully little of her. It is true that he could have seen more if he had tried, but Peter was not used to practice finesse to win minutes and hours with a girl, and did not feel called upon, bluntly, to take such opportunities. His stay was not so pleasant as he had expected. He had thought a week in the same house with Miss De Voe, Dorothy and Lispenard, without much regard to other possible guests, could not but be a continual pleasure. But he was conscious that something was amiss with his three friends. Nor was Peter the only one who felt it. Dorothy said to her family when she went home:
“I can’t imagine what is the matter with Cousin Anneke. All last spring she was nicer to me than she has ever been before, but from the moment I arrived at Newport, and before I could possibly have said or done anything to offend her, she treated me in the snippiest way. After two days I asked her what the matter was, but she insisted there was nothing, and really lost her temper at my suggesting the idea. There was something, I know, for when I said I was coming home sooner than I had at first intended, she didn’t try to make me stay.”
“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Ogden, “she was disappointed in something, and so vented her feeling on you.”
“But she wasn’t cross—except when I asked her what the matter was. She was just—just snippy.”
“Was Mr. Stirling there?”
“Yes. And a lot of other people. I don’t think anybody had a good time, unless it was Cousin Lispenard. And he wasn’t a bit nice. He had some joke to himself, and kept making remarks that nobody could understand, and chuckling over them. I told him once that he was rude, but he said that ‘when people went to a play they should laugh at the right points.’ That’s the nice thing about Mr. Stirling. You know that what he says is the real truth.”
“Lispenard’s always trying to be clever.”
“Yes. What do you suppose he said to me as I came away!”
“What?”
“He shook my hand, laughing, and said, ‘Exit villain. It is to be a comedy, not a tragedy.’ What could he mean?”