“You don't like this place--I know that,” Percy Roden was saying, in continuation of a desultory conversation. He looked up from the letters before him with a smile which was kind enough and a little patronizing. Patronage is perhaps the armour of the outwitted.
“Not very much,” answered Dorothy, with a laugh. “But I dare say it will be better in the summer.”
“I mean this villa,” pursued Roden, flicking the ash from his cigarette and leaning back in his chair. He had grand, rather tired gestures, which possibly impressed some people. Grandeur, however, like sentiment, is not indigenous to the hearth. Our domestic admirers are not always watching us.
Dorothy was looking out of the window. “It is not a bad little place,” she said practically, “when one has grown accustomed to its sandiness.”
“It will not be for long,” said Percy Roden.
And his sister turned and looked at him with a sudden gravity.
“No; I have been thinking that it will be better for us to move into The Hague--Park Straat or Oranje Straat.”
Dorothy turned and faced him now. There was a faint, far-off resemblance between these two, but Dorothy had the better face--shrewder, more thoughtful, cleverer. Her eyes, instead of being large and dark and rather dreamy, were grey and speculative. Her features were clear-cut and well-cut--a face suggestive of feeling and of self-suppression, which, when they go together, go to the making of a satisfactory human being. This was a woman who, to put it quite plainly, would scarcely have been held in honour by our grandmothers, but who promised well enough for her possible granddaughters; who, when the fads are lived down and the emancipation is over and the shrieking is done, will make a very excellent grandmother to a race of women who shall be equal to men and respected of men, and, best of all, beloved of men. Wise mothers say that their daughters must sooner or later pass through an awkward age. Woman is passing through an awkward age now, and Dorothy Roden might be classed among those who are doing it gracefully.
She looked at her brother with those wise grey eyes, and did not speak at once.
“Oranje Straat and Park Straat,” she said lightly, “cost money.”
“Oh, that is all right!” answered her brother, carelessly, as one who in his time has handled great sums.