Thus bidden, the young Stubbses all turned their attention on their new cousin, and said their greeting and shook hands with various kinds of manner.
There was May, aged fourteen, a very consequential young person, with an inclination to be short and stout, like her mother, and had her nice fair hair plaited into a tail behind and tied with a bunch of mauve ribbon, worn with a white frock in memory of the uncle by marriage whom she had never seen.
"How d'you do, Cousin Sarah?" she said, with a fine-lady air which petrified poor Sarah, who thought that and her cousin's earrings and watch-chain the finest things she had ever beheld about any human being before. Then there came the redoubtable Flossie, who had torn her best frock, and was twelve and a half. Flossie, who was nearly as big as May, came forward with a giggle, and said "How----" and went off into fits of laughter at some private joke of her own.
"I'm ashamed of you, Flossie," cried Mrs. Stubbs sharply; "shake 'ands with your cousin Sarah at once. Ah! this is Lily--Lily's five and a 'alf, Sarah--she's the baby."
Then there was Tom, the eldest boy, who gripped hold of Sarah's hand and wrung it until she could have shrieked with the pain, but, taking it as an expression of kindness and welcome, she bore it bravely and looked at him with a smiling face; she knew better afterwards.
After Tom came the twins, Minnie and the Johnnie who had been slapped the day before; and last of all, Janey, the prettiest, and Sarah fancied the sweetest, of them all. Janey was seven, or, as she said herself, nearly eight.
"I suppose," said Mrs. Stubbs, addressing herself to Flossie, "that your pa 'asn't got 'ome yet?"
But, presently, when Mrs. Stubbs had changed her dress for a garment such as Sarah had never beheld before, and which May told her was a tea-gown, and was enjoying a cup of sweet-smelling tea in the large and shady drawing-room--to Sarah a perfect dream of beauty--he came! Came with a bustle and noise like a tempest, and caught his stout wife round the waist, with a "Hulloa, old woman, it's a sight for sore eyes to see you 'ome again!"
Sarah had determined to be surprised at nothing, but her Uncle Stubbs was altogether too much for her resolution. In apologising to herself afterwards, she said she was obliged to stare.