Page:An American Girl in India.djvu/12

 and my mother some day, they say, will get him made Secretary of State for something or other—I forget just what—war, I think, but I'm not quite sure. Anyway, he's had enough experience in domestic strife, if that's any use. My mother and he really get on together quite well, but you wouldn't think they did if you lived next door to them in a semi-detached villa with rather thin walls. You see, they are both just gone on argument, and they both appear on platforms—fortunately, both on the same side—in public, and so they like to get all the practice they can at home. My mother was a great social-political light before she married my step-father, and they do say she married him just to get an assured position in the government.

Well, you see, my mother having married an Englishman, we—that's my sister Dorothy, Bob, and myself—have been brought up mostly in England, and so we don't speak much American. I guess it's only at times when I get just wild that I speak any at all.

It was a glorious afternoon in late September, and we—Aunt Agatha, Dorothy, Bob, and myself—were sitting in the drawing-room at Seldon after lunch. Mother and her political appendage, as a facetious member of the opposition once dubbed my step-father, were away shooting up in Scotland, and Aunt Agatha was left in charge of us, and Tony—principally of Tony. If at the obnoxious age of seven one child can be more obnoxious than another, that child is Tony. I had thought of leaving him out of this narrative altogether, but