Now he was embarrassed somewhat by her playful insistence on her mother's right to her boy for a time.
Playfulness sat as ill on her as could well be imagined, and he was captious over her raillery on his hurry to be at his cousin's side, calling it atrocious taste in his irritable mind, he who had never been irritable, to whom it would have seemed the worst of taste to question good taste in his mother.
More than one person was irritable with the Dowager that day.

The General was furiously irritable over the transparent man[oe]uvre by which she packed off the young people together.
"Enough to spoil the whole thing," he thought, pursing his lips and pushing out his eyebrows as he did when he was annoyed.

"Indelicate! Stupid! I'd rather have her when she was disagreeable.

My poor Nell! She did not look very happy as she went.

I had a great mind to go with her and spoil things, after all." The cousins found their way to Nelly's favourite haunt, the little coppice of low almond trees with the troops of narcissi and violets and primroses colouring all the brown earth.