"Dorothy!" insisted the voice.
"Oh, la!" she cried, impatiently, "will you hush?"
"No, I won't!"
"Then our cousin Ormond will come up-stairs and give you what Paddy gave the kettle-drum--won't you?" she added, raising her eyes to me.
"And what was that?" I asked, astonished.
Somebody on the landing above went off into fits of laughter; and, as I reddened, my cousin Dorothy, too, began to laugh, showing an edge of small, white teeth under the red lip's line.
"Are you vexed because we laugh?" she asked.
My tongue stung with a retort, but I stood silent. These Varicks might forget their manners, but I might not forget mine.
She honored me with a smile, sweeping me from head to foot with her bright eyes. My buckskins were dirty from travel, and the thrums in rags; and I knew that she noted all these matters.
"Cousin," she lisped, "I fear you are something of a macaroni."