"Sounds appetising," said Maxwell shortly. "I don't! I imagine Peggy like her mother, with blue eyes and brown hair. Mrs. Saville is awfully pretty. I have seen her often, and if her daughter is like her——"
"I don't care in the least how she looks," said Esther, severely. "It's her character that matters. Indian children are generally spoiled, and if she has been to a boarding-school she may give herself airs. Then we shall quarrel. I am not going to be patronised by a girl of fourteen. I expect she will be Mellicent's friend, not mine."
"I wonder what sums she is in," said Mellicent, dreamily. "Rob! what do you think about it? Are you glad or sorry? You haven't said anything yet."
Robert raised his eyes from his microscope, and looked her up and down very much as a big Newfoundland dog looks at the terrier which disturbs its slumber.
"It's nothing to me," he said loftily. "She may come if she likes." Then, with sudden recollection, "Does she learn the violin? Because we have one girl in this house who is learning the violin, and life won't be worth living if there is a second."
He tucked his big note-book under his chin as he spoke, and began sawing across it with a pencil, wagging his head and rolling his eyes in imitation of Mellicent's own manner of practising, and producing at the same time such long-drawn, cat-like wails from between his closed lips as made the listeners shriek with laughter. Mellicent, however, felt bound to expostulate.
"It's not the tune at all," she said loudly. "Not like any of my pieces; and if I do roll my eyes, I don't tumble up my hair and pull faces at the ceiling, as some people do, and I know who they are, but I am too polite to say so. I hope Peggy will be my friend, because then there will be two of us, and you won't dare to tease me any more. When Arthur was here, a boy pulled my hair, and he carried him upstairs and held his head underneath the shower-bath."
"I'll pull it again, and see if Peggy will do the same," said Rob pleasantly; and poor Mellicent stared from one smiling face to another, conscious that she was being laughed at, but unable to see the point of the joke.
"When Peggy comes," she said, in an injured tone, "I hope she will be sympathetic. I'm the youngest, and I think you ought all to do what I want, instead of which you make fun, and laugh among yourselves, and send me all the messages. For instance, when Max wanted his stamps brought down——"
Maxwell passed his big hand over her hair and face, and reversing the direction, rubbed up the point of the little snub nose.