en, as the others burst into
hilarious laughter, "Oh, it's no use shrieking at me; I mean what I
say," she insisted. "A big nose--like Wellington's! When people are
very clever, they always have big noses. I imagine Peggy small, with a
little thin face, because she was born in India, and lived there until
she was six years old, and a great big nose in the middle--"

"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 already _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 notebook 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, producing at the same
time such long-drawn, catlike 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 cried loudly. "Not like any of my
pieces; and if I _do_ roll my eyes, I don't rumple 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