Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/247

 His laughter both attracted and annoyed her. She made him play tennis and golf croquet with her, and she was ready to cheat with fierce assurance.

She had a supreme contempt for Maurice. She more or less ignored her elder sisters. She scandalized her father.

She called Christopher "Kit-bag" or just "Boy." She was home from a very notable school, but the school appeared to have had no effect upon her. To Molly most of the world's opinions were tosh.

She inveigled Kit into wild scrambles about the place, up trees, anywhere. She went adrift with him in the punt, heaving paddle and pole into the water. She would sit with her bony knees tucked up under her chin, and declaim and argue and mock.

She said the most extraordinary things.

"O—father! Poor old father has forgotten how to grind the faces of the poor."

She was startling in her shrewdness. She seemed to have a Puckish intuition.

"Maurice won't cut any ice. He'll just give sugared powders to old ladies."

Kit talked back at her.

"You want to play—all the game yourself. You can't do that."

"O, can't I!"

"You must see the other person's point of view."

"Don't talk tosh. Poor old pater has always been trying to see his beastly workmen's point of view. They are all over him now like a lot of dogs. I'd teach 'em."

"How?"

"With a whip, old Kit-bag, a whip."

She hated losing; she could not play a losing game, and this fierce self-regard of hers led to a half-humorous yet very human incident. Kit had beaten her twice at golf croquet, and at the end of the third game when he won on the post she hurled her mallet at him because he had laughed.

The mallet caught Kit on the head above the right eyebrow.

It hurt him.

She flew at him with sudden contrition, and threw fierce young arms about his neck.