"Best mirror your faults in it while you have the chance," said Harry, promptly.
"We lack polish--even Walter Butler and Guy Johnson sneer at us under father's nose," said Ruyven. "What the devil is it in us Varicks that set folk whispering and snickering and nudging one another? Am I parti-colored, like an Oneida at a scalp-dance? Does Harry wear bat's wings for ears? Are Dorothy's legs crooked, that they all stare?"
"It's your red head," observed Cecile. "The good folk think to see the noon-sun setting in the wood--"
"Oh, tally! you always say that," snapped Ruyven.
Dorothy, leaning forward, looked at me with dreamy blue eyes that saw beyond me.
"We are doubtless a little mad, ... as they say," she mused. "Otherwise we seem to be like other folk. We have clothing befitting, when we choose to wear it; we were schooled in Albany; we are people of quality, like the other patroons; we lack nothing for servants or tenants--what ails them all, to nudge and stare and grin when we pass?"
"Mr. Livingston says our deportment shocks all," murmured Cecile.
"The Schuylers will have none of us," added Harry, plaintively--"and I admire them, too."
"Oh, they all conduct shamefully when I go to school in Albany," burst out Sammy; "and I thrashed that puling young patroon, too, for he saw me and refused my salute. But I think he will render me my bow next time."
"Do the quality not visit you here?" I asked Dorothy.