The cousins were whispering and laughing together all this time and regarding their new cousin with shy admiration, very different from the manner in which they had looked at poor Flushington; and the old nurse, too, was overjoyed and declared that she felt sure from the first that her Master Frederick had not turned out so undersized as him—meaning Flushington.
"Yes, yes," said Lushington hastily, "quite a mistake on both sides. Quite sure Flushington isn't the man to go and intercept any fellow's aunt."
"I wouldn't have done it for worlds, if I had known!" he protested very sincerely.
"Well," she said, a little mollified, "I am very sorry we've all disturbed you like this, Mr.—Mr. Flushington" (the unlucky man said something about not minding it now); "and now, Fred, perhaps you will show us the way to the right rooms?"
"Come along, then!" said he; "I'll run down and tell them to send up some lunch" (they did not explain that they had lunched already). "You come, too, Flushington, and then after lunch you and I will row the ladies up to Byron's Pool?"
"Yes, do come, Mr. Flushington," the ladies said kindly.
But Flushington wriggled out of it. To begin with, he did not consider he knew his neighbor sufficiently well; besides, he had had enough of female society for one day.
Indeed, long after that, he would be careful in fastening his door about luncheon-time, and if he saw any person in Cambridge who looked as if she might by any possibility turn out to be a relation, he would flee down a back street.