Cuthbert and Doris
III
THE LITTLE ICE-MEN
Marian's daddy was very glad when Captain Jeremy married Gwendolen's aunt, because he and Captain Jeremy had been boys at school together, and he had always been very fond of him; and he was gladder still when Captain Jeremy and Gwendolen's aunt left Bellington Square. This they did a week after the wedding, because Captain Jeremy hated Bellington Square; and they went to live in an old farmhouse, two miles out of the town.
It was a beautiful old house, with a gabled roof and golden-red bricks like a winter sunset; and the hall and passages of it were dark and velvety, and the rooms upstairs smelt of lavender. Leading from the road to the front door was a cobbly path, with lawns on each side of it, and big trees standing on the lawns, with low-spreading branches that touched the grass. Behind the house was a kitchen-garden full of cucumber-frames and vegetables, and behind that was an orchard, with a gate leading into the fields. These were all hard and crinkly with frost, and the fruit-trees were bare, because it was the second of January, but that made the house seem all the snugger, with its low panelled walls and log fires.
When they had been in this house a week, Gwendolen's aunt gave a children's party, and Marian and Cuthbert were asked to go, because their daddy was Captain Jeremy's friend. Marian was very pleased, because she had always liked Gwendolen, although she had never known her very well, but Cuthbert said that he didn't like her and that he'd rather stay at home. Marian told him how much she had improved since her voyage to Monkey Island, but Cuthbert said that he didn't care, and that she was a silly sort of girl anyhow. He was only pretending, however, because just after Christmas he had been in hospital having his tonsils out, and he had already missed two or three parties and didn't mean to miss another.
So they went to the party, and Cuthbert was rather glad, because one of the girls there was a girl called Doris, who had been in hospital having her tonsils out just at the same time as he. She was rather a decent girl, ten years old, with dark-coloured eyes and brown hair, and one of her thumbs was double-jointed, and she had been eight times to the seaside. Just at present she was a little pale, and so was Cuthbert himself; and Gwendolen was so brown that, when they stood near her, they looked paler still.