“Come in, come in,” said Ernest testily. “You are letting an abominable draught on the back of my neck. I have been overheated playing tennis.”
“Why is he always late for tea?” growled Nicholas.
“Please don’t bring that muddy dog with you!” cried his sister, and the two girls shrieked as the cocker spaniel padded about the table, his fringed tail waving.
With a grimace, half-deprecating, half-impudent, Renny disappeared behind the curtains, put his dog outside, and reappeared at the door leading from the hall.
He was a tall thin youth with a look of wiry strength, whose arrogant features already bore a striking resemblance to his grandmother’s. His skin, which in young boyhood had been creamy, was now becoming weather-beaten by exposure to sun and wind in all seasons. His vivid brown eyes flashed beneath brows so expressive that already a horizontal line across his forehead marked their animation. His hair, brown in shadow, flashed into burnished red when the light touched it. This rather extraordinary hair covered a head of definite, statuesque modeling of which Meg had once observed that if it came to beating it against a stone wall, the wall might get the worst of it. As growing boy and heir to Jalna he had been the object of so much criticism from his grandmother, parents, aunts, and uncles; his doings had been the focus of such constant speculation, encouragement, and reproof, that he carried himself with an air of wariness as though always prepared to face attack.
With his entrance the attention of the two girls was fixed on him, and Nicholas was forced to raise his voice and repeat to Meggie that he had had a letter from his sister and that she and her husband were sailing the following week for Canada.
“That will be nice,” said Meg, vaguely, then added, with more warmth, “I do wonder what they will bring me for a wedding present!”
“Some cast-off bit of jet or pinchbeck of your aunt’s,” said old Mrs. Whiteoak, scraping the jam pot.
Meg pushed out her pretty lips. “They ought to bring me something really handsome.”
“I am sure Augusta and Edwin will bring you a charming present,” said Ernest.
“I don’t see what makes you think so,” said his mother. “Their presents are always tarnished or stink of moth balls…. More tea, Molly! Have you gone to sleep behind the teapot? Ha — that’s right — plenty of sugar.”
Nicholas put in — “They are bringing something more interesting than a present for you, Meggie. They are bringing a wedding guest, your cousin, twice or thrice removed — Mr. Malahide Court.”
Meg stared. “I’ve never heard of him. What a name!”
Her grandmother glared across the table at her. “Don’t you dare to poke fun at that name, miss!”
“I wasn’t! I only said what a name!”
“You jeered! You know you did! I won’t have it! I was a Court and there’s no finer family living. And Malahide is a good old Court name. The Malahides married the Courts and lived in their castles when the Whiteoaks were yeomen, let me tell you! Perhaps you’ve forgotten that I am the granddaughter of an earl, hey? Have you forgotten that?
Grandmother was working herself into a temper. She rapped the table with her spoon to punctuate her sentences.
“Keep your hair on, Mamma,” soothed Philip. “We all know about our noble ancestors and realize that we’re only poor Colonials ourselves. There’s no need of getting upset about it.”
“Malahide Court,” said Ernest sententiously, “must be well past forty. I remember that he came to my school in England just as I was leaving.”
“What was he like?” asked Nicholas.
“A miserable little shaver.”
“Had he the Court nose?” demanded old Mrs. Whiteoak.
“H’m, well, I don’t remember that, but I know he was no beauty.”
“I am anxious to see him. I hope he will stop the summer.”
Philip raised his eyebrows. “Let us see him before we hope that, Mamma.”
Small feet were heard running in the hall and Mary’s face turned, all alight, toward the door. It opened and her elder son, Eden, pranced in.
“I’m a pony,” he declared, and galloped round the table. Mary stretched out her hand to catch him as he passed. She had lost three infants before his advent and felt no security in her passionate possession of him. He eluded her hand, but was seized by Meg and rapturously kissed. Both she and Renny evinced a demonstrative affection for their little half-brothers, taking, as Mary saw it, a perverse pleasure in coming between her and them.
Now Meg asked of him — “What do you suppose I have brought from town?”
“I don’t know. A little engine for me?”
“You silly, no! But I have bought your page’s suit. White satin with a lace collar.”
“Oh.” He was impressed. “May I try it on, now?”
His mother spoke sharply. “No, Eden, you must wait till tomorrow. Your hands are probably dirty and it will soon be your bedtime.”
“See, my hands are clean!” He spread them out for inspection.
Meg took him on her knee. She put her lips close to his ear and whispered something which apparently satisfied him. He took the piece of cake Renny offered and, with a daring glance at his mother, began to eat it. The older people were still talking about Malahide Court and speculating on the reasons for his visit.
After tea the two girls took Eden to Meg’s room and locked the door.
“The idea of Mother saying he must not try on his page’s suit!” exclaimed Meg. “That is always her way — to spoil our pleasure if she can.”
“It must be horrid,” said Vera, “having a stepmother.”
“It’s abominable! Especially when she was once one’s governess. She attacks one from both angles. But Renny and I don’t knuckle under.” She dipped the corner of a towel in her ewer and wiped Eden’s face and hands. He looked very earnestly into her face.
Vera unfolded the suit from its wrappings. “It’s nice,” she said, “that you are so fond of her children.”
“Please don’t ever call them hers! She had them, — the best thing she’s ever done, — but they are perfect Whiteoaks.”
“This one looks like her, doesn’t he?”
“H’m, he has her colouring, but he’s just himself.”
She had taken off his sailor suit and he stood in his vest before them, white, fragile, yet proudly built. Meg began to dress him in the white satin garments.
When they went down they found that the family had moved out to the lawn to enjoy the late sunlight. Philip, Nicholas, and Ernest stood together admiring the house. It faced the sun serenely, as though conscious that everything about it was in exemplary order. No crumbled brick or rotted shingle or sagging shutter was there to take from its air of solid well-being. The bulk of the stables was concealed by a group of stalwart evergreens, and stretching far behind it were spread the six hundred acres of farm and woodland, pasture, ravine, and winding stream that had been, half a century before, reclaimed by Captain Whiteoak from the wild.
Renny had picked up a tennis racket and was sending balls into the net. Old Mrs. Whiteoak possessed herself of the other racket and faced him.
“Now then! Now then!” she challenged. “A ball to your grandmother, young cock!”
Renny, laughing, sent one softly bouncing toward her. She ignored it and stood with the racket foursquare to her shoulder, formidable-looking in her large ribboned cap.
“You