“Bring him downstairs to a dance!” Jack answered with a merry laugh.  “He isn’t that kind of an old gentleman, either.  Why, Corinne, you ought to see him!  You might as well ask old Bishop Gooley to lead the german.”

Jack’s foot was now ready to mount the lower step of the stairs.  Corinne bit her lip.

“You never do anything to please me!” she snapped back.  She knew she was fibbing, but something must be done to check this new form of independence—­and then, now that Garry couldn’t come, she really needed him.  “You don’t want to come, that’s it—­” She facing him now, her little nose high in the air, her cheeks flaming with anger.

“You must not say that, Corinne,” he answered in a slightly indignant tone.

Corinne drew herself up to her full height—­toes included; not very high, but all she could do—­and said in a voice pitched to a high key, her finger within a few inches of his nose: 

“It’s true, and I will say it!”

The rustle of silk was heard overhead, and a plump, tightly laced woman in voluminous furs, her head crowned by a picture hat piled high with plumes, was making her way down the stairs.  Jack looked up and waved his hand to his aunt, and then stood at mock attention, like a corporal on guard, one hand raised to salute her as she passed.  The boy, with the thought of Peter coming, was very happy this afternoon.

“What are you two quarrelling about?” came the voice.  Rather a soft voice with a thread of laziness running through it.

“Jack’s too mean for anything, mother.  He knows we haven’t men enough without him for a cotillion, now that Garry has dropped out, and he’s been just stupid enough to invite some old man to come and see him this evening.”

The furs and picture hat swept down and on, Jack standing at attention, hands clasping an imaginary musket his face drawn down to its severest lines, his cheeks puffed out to make him look the more solemn.  When the wren got “real mad” he would often say she was the funniest thing alive.

“I’m a pig, I know, aunty” (here Jack completed his salute with a great flourish), “but Corinne does not really want me, and she knows it.  She only wants to have her own way.  They don’t dance cotillions when they come here—­at least they didn’t last time, and I don’t believe they will to-night.  They sit around with each other in the corners and waltz with the fellows they’ve picked out—­and it’s all arranged between them, and has been for a week—­ ever since they heard Corinne was going to give a dance.”  The boy spoke with earnestness and a certain tone of conviction in his voice, although his face was still radiant.

“Well, can’t you sit around, too, Jack?” remarked his aunt, pausing in her onward movement for an instant.  “I’m sure there will be some lovely girls.”

“Yes, but they don’t want me.  I’ve tried it too often, aunty—­ they’ve all got their own set.”