Explore "The Related Muff" by Edith Nesbit on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
We had never seen our cousin Sidney till that Christmas Eve, and we didn't want to see him then, and we didn't like him when we did see him. He was just dumped down into the middle of us by mother, at a time when it would have been unkind to her to say how little we wanted him.
We knew already that there wasn't to be any proper Christmas for us, because Aunt Ellie -- the one who always used to send the necklaces and carved things from India, and remembered everybody's birthday -- had come home ill. Very ill she was, at a hotel in London, and mother had to go to her, and, of course, father was away with his ship.