‘No, I’ll make you, master! Tell your mother not to wait luncheon for us, Gillian; we’ll pick up something somewhere.’ ‘Hurrah!’ cried Wilfred and Fergus, to whom this was an immense additional pleasure. The girls turned away into the lane, Valetta indulging in an outrageous grumble. ‘Why should Dolores have come out to spoil everything?’ Dolores did not speak. ‘Just our one chance,’ sighed Mysie, ‘and perhaps we should have seen the fox.’ ‘We may do that yet,’ said Gillian; ‘he may come this way.’ ‘I don’t care if he does,’ said Valetta. ‘I wanted to see them draw the copse. I believe Dolores did it on purpose to spoil our pleasure.’ ‘Don’t be so cross, Val,’ said Mysie. ‘She can’t help being tired.’ ‘Why did she come, then, when nobody wanted her?’ ‘For shame, Val,’ said Gillian, ‘you know mamma would be very angry to hear you say anything so unkind.’ ‘It’s quite true, though,’ muttered Valetta. ‘Never mind, Dolly, dear,’ said Mysie, shocked. ‘Val doesn’t really mean it, you know.’ ‘Yes, she does,’ said Dolores, shaking her comforter off; ‘you all do! I wish I had never come here.’ Mysie tried in her own persevering way to argue again that Val was only put out, and disappointed at having to turn back, to which Valetta, in spite of Gillian’s endeavour to silence her, added, ‘So stupid of her to come out! What did she do it for?’ Dolores, who hardly ever cried, was tired into crying now. ‘You grudge me everything; you wouldn’t let me speak one single word to Uncle Regie, and kept bothering about! I’ll never do anything with you again! I won’t.’ ‘Did you want to speak to Uncle Regie?’ asked Mysie. ‘To be sure I did! He is my uncle, that I knew ever so long before you did, and you never let him speak to me.’ ‘Mrs. Halfpenny always put us on the high chair, with our faces to the wall when we were jealous,’ remarked Valetta. ‘But did you want to say anything to him in particular?’ said Mysie, revolving means of contriving a private interview. ‘That’s no business of yours! I wish you would let me alone!’ broke out Dolores, in a fretful fright lest any one should guess that she had anything on her mind.