“Lissa!” Ishmael’s voice was very angry.  “Never repeat what anyone has said about anyone else—­never, never.  Do you hear me?”

“I don’t care, she did say it, so there!”

Nicky was crimson.  He went to the door.  “Then it’s easy to see where you get your good manners from!” he retorted, and was gone before Ishmael could say anything to him.  Lissa was still trembling with rage, and Ruth, who was rather a cry-baby, lifted up her voice and wept, partly because of the disappointment and partly because she could not bear people not to be what she called “all comfy together.”

Georgie Ruan heard the noise and came in briskly.  Ishmael made her a despairing gesture to remove the two children.

Georgie stood taking in the scene.  She had altered in fourteen years more than either Ishmael, who was seldom away from her, or than she herself, had realised; for she had never been a beauty anxiously to watch the glass, and motherhood had absorbed her to the overshadowing of self.  She had coarsened more than actually changed—­her sturdy little figure had lost its litheness in solidity, her round face had thickened and the skin roughened.  Her movements were as vigorous and her mouth as wonderful, though it was more lost in her face, but her small blue eyes were still bright.  She still managed to keep her air of a great baby, and it went rather sweetly with her obvious matronliness.  She swept like a whirlwind on the two little girls, scolding and coaxing in a breath.  Lissa at once started to pour out her grievance about the faithless Nicky.

“He said he had an engagement,” put in Ishmael, seeing Georgie’s face harden.

“Oh, of course,” she retorted, “and we can guess what it is....”  She broke off as Ishmael made a warning sign towards the children.  “Anyway, I think it’s too bad of him to promise the children to take them out and then not to do it,” she insisted.  “That’s the third time he’s done that lately, and I know how they were looking forward to it.  They came home from school half an hour earlier on purpose.”

Lissa and Ruth went to a small private school, whose scholars only consisted of the half-dozen children of the local gentry, and which was held at the village.  It was called “school,” and Lissa and Ruth felt very proud of going to it, but in reality it was no more than going out to a governess one shared with other girls instead of having a governess to oneself at home.  Ruth ran to her father and clung to his knee heavily; he stroked her shock of brown hair and said:  “Cheer up, little Piggy-widden”—­which was his pet name for her, partly because she was the youngest and smallest of the family, partly because she was so fat, and in Cornwall the “piggy-widden” is the name for the smallest of the litter.