Thus bidden, the young Stubbses all turned their attention on their new
cousin, and said their greeting and shook hands with various kinds of
manner.
There was May, aged fourteen, a very consequential young person, with an
inclination to be short and stout, like her mother, and had her nice
fair hair plaited into a tail behind and tied with a bunch of mauve
ribbon, worn with a white frock in memory of the uncle by marriage whom
she had never seen.
"How d’you do, Cousin Sarah?" she said, with a fine-lady air which
petrified poor Sarah, who thought that and her cousin’s earrings and
watch-chain the finest things she had ever beheld about any human being
before. Then there came the redoubtable Flossie, who had torn her best
frock, and was twelve and a half. Flossie, who was nearly as big as
May, came forward with a giggle, and said "How----" and went off into
fits of laughter at some private joke of her own.
"I’m ashamed of you, Flossie," cried Mrs. Stubbs sharply; "shake ’ands
with your cousin Sarah at once. Ah! this is Lily--Lily’s five and a
’alf, Sarah--she’s the baby."
Then there was Tom, the eldest boy, who gripped hold of Sarah’s hand and
wrung it until she could have shrieked with the pain, but, taking it as
an expression of kindness and welcome, she bore it bravely and looked at
him with a smiling face; she knew better afterwards.
After Tom came the twins, Minnie and the Johnnie who had been slapped
the day before; and last of all, Janey, the prettiest, and Sarah fancied
the sweetest, of them all. Janey was seven, or, as she said herself,
nearly eight.
"I suppose," said Mrs. Stubbs, addressing herself to Flossie, "that your
pa ’asn’t got ’ome yet?"
"No, Ma, not yet," returned Flossie.
But, presently, when Mrs. Stubbs had changed her dress for a garment
such as Sarah had never beheld before, and which May told her was a
tea-gown, and was enjoying a cup of sweet-smelling tea in the large and
shady drawing-room--to Sarah a perfect dream of beauty--he came! Came
with a bustle and noise like a tempest, and caught his stout wife round
the waist, with a "Hulloa, old woman, it’s a sight for sore eyes to see
you ’ome again!"
Sarah had determined to be surprised at nothing, but her Uncle Stubbs
was altogether too much for her resolution. In apologising to herself
afterwards, she said she was obliged to stare.
"And where’s the little lass?" Mr. Stubbs asked when he had kissed his
wife. "Oh, there! Well, aren’t you going to speak to your uncle, eh?"
"Yes, Uncle," said Sarah shyly.
He drew her nearer to him, and turned her face to the light.
"Like her dear ma," put in Mrs. Stubbs.
"Yes," said Mr. Stubbs shortly.
"Not like her pa at all," Mrs. Stubbs persisted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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