On
the way Mysie was only too happy to explain the family as she called
it, when she had recovered from her astonishment that Dolores, always
living in England, could not 'count up her cousins.' 'Why they always
had been shown their photographs on a Sunday evening after the Bible
pictures, and even little Primrose knew all the likeness, even of those
she had never seen.'
The catalogue of names and ages followed.
Dolores heard it with a feeling of bewilderment, and a sense that one
Maude was worth all the eight put together with whom she was called on
to be familiar. She found herself standing in a court, rather grass-
grown, where Gillian, with little Primrose by her side, was flinging
peas to a number of pigeons, grey, white, and brown, who fluttered
round her. Valetta and Fergus were on the granary steps, throwing meal
and sop mixed together to a host of cackling, struggling fowls, who
tried to leap over each other's backs. Wilfred seemed busy at some
hutches where some rabbits twitched their noses at cabbage leaves.
Mysie proceeded to minister to some black and rust-coloured guinea-
pigs, which Dolores thought very ugly, uninteresting, and odorous.
Then there were dogs jumping about everywhere, and cats and kittens
parading before people's feet, so that Dolores felt as if she had been
turned into a den of wild beasts, and resolved against ever again
venturing into the court at 'feeding-time.' A big bell gathered all
the children up together into a race to the house.
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