‘Well,’ said Florence to Mab, ‘we two are left alone. We’re the young ones, we have to keep out of the way. But I am sure the Swinfords would rather have seen you and me than Emmy. We are the youngest and we are the most amusing.’

‘Oh, please speak for yourself,’ said Mab, ‘I am not amusing at all.’

Florence looked at her with an air of consideration. ‘Well, perhaps that is true,’ she said; ‘you have a turn-up nose, and you ought to be lively, but appearances are very deceiving. I wonder what that army of observation will do to-day? I call them our army of observation because they have gone to spy out the land, and decide upon what are the proper lines of strategy. It’s quite new to us in Watcham to have a squire’s family: and then it is not even a common squire’s family. They are such superior people, and their ways are so unlike ours. Shouldn’t you say it would be a nice thing in Watcham to have people whose ways are not as our ways?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Mab, with the indifference of extreme youth, ‘we are well enough as we are.’

‘It is easy for you to speak, with only Aunt Emily to think of, and your own way—and seventeen,’ said Florry, with a sigh. ‘I would give something to be seventeen again.’

‘Why?’ said Mab. ‘It is the most ridiculous age—too old to be a child, too young to be anything else. One cares no more for dolls and that sort of thing, and one doesn’t care either for what the old people talk about. How they go on and on and talk! as if anybody minded.’

‘You shouldn’t listen,’ said Florry.

‘Sometimes one can’t help it. Sometimes there’s a bit of story in it, and then it’s nice—only in that case they say, ‘You remember so-and-so: what a tragedy that was!’ and then the other wags his or her head, and they shut up, not reflecting that you’re dying to know.’

‘There’s something of that sort about Mrs. Swinford,’ said Florence; ‘there was quite a talk about calling before mamma made up her mind. Mrs. FitzStephen came in about a week or two ago, and she said, “I have come to know what you’re going to do?” And mamma said, without even asking what she meant, “I am very much perplexed, and I don’t know in the least.” And then papa, standing in front of the fire, with his coat-tails on his arms, you know, grumbles out—“You had better let it alone.” “Let what alone?” mamma called out quickly, and he just stared and said nothing. At this mamma said, “They are sure to entertain a great deal; they are people that can’t live without company.” And Mrs. FitzStephen, she said, “Oh, I don’t care for such company.” And then mamma replied, with her grand Roman matron air, “You have no young people to think of, Mrs. FitzStephen.”’

Florence was a tolerable mimic, and she ‘did’ those characters, with whom Mab was intimately acquainted, in an exceedingly broad style, and with considerable effect.

‘Florry, you oughtn’t to take off your own father and mother.’

‘Who then?’ cried Florry. ‘I must take such as I have; I don’t know such lots of people. Wait till the Swinfords come on the scene and I’ll do them.’

‘Ah, he’s not so easy to do. The others you’ve known all your life, and they are all the same kind of people: but you never saw any one like—that gentleman. The General would give you no clue to him, nor anybody you know here. He is like nobody you ever saw; he is—I don’t know what to say.’

‘You are always thinking of that fur coat of his and patent leather shoes. I wonder if they will see him to-day? They had much better have taken you and me, Mab. Emmy may be the eldest, but she will never make any impression. A man like that will never look twice at her.’

‘Why should he?’ said Mab, raising her eyebrows, ‘or what does it matter whether he does or not?’

‘Oh, Mab, you silly little thing,’ said Florence, ‘you must know, however silly you may be, that it matters a great deal. Think only what it would matter! To have a girl settled like that—rich, able to do what she pleased, one’s sister; only think; or still more if it was one’s self. We’ve got twenty pounds a year each for our clothes, fancy! And Mrs. Swinford will have hundreds—she will have just as much as she likes, and whatever she likes, and a grand house where she could ask the Queen herself: and power—power to get Jim settled somehow, to make him sure of his living: perhaps to get something better for papa, and save mamma some of the anxiety she has. And if anything happened to them, why, there would be a home for—for—the other one, don’t you see? Oh!’ said Florence, with a deep-drawn breath that seemed to come from the very depth of her being, ‘it would matter so much that it is wicked, it is dreadful, to think that a man could make such a change in another creature’s life only by looking at her and throwing his handkerchief. It’s immoral to dangle a chance like that under a poor girl’s very nose.’

Mab was not unimpressed with this terrible truth. She felt also that to contemplate the differences that might ensue if one of the daughters of the Rectory became Mrs. Swinford of the Hall was more than words could say. The very possibility caught at her breath. She made a momentary pause of awe, and then she said, ‘But he never will, he never will!’

‘Emmy, no,’ said Florence; ‘no—she’s too—she’s not enough—oh! she’s impossible, and I can see that very well for myself. Emmy is—she’s one’s sister, and she is as nice as ever was. You know she is a nice girl! But she was never made for that; whereas if they had taken you and me——’

‘Don’t say me, please,’ said Mab, reddening all over that blunt-featured and irregular little face, which was unfortunately so like the Pakenhams. The flush was quite hot, and discomposed her. ‘I’m impossible, too—much more impossible,’ she said.

‘Oh! you stand upon your family,’ said Florence, ‘and upon your mother’s position, and all that; but you may take my word for it, that if you were the Marquis’s own daughter instead of a disrep—— I mean instead of his brother’s, you would have to do the very same thing. If it is because you’re not pretty, that’s true enough; but there’s never any telling what may take a man like that, and you’ve got plenty of “go” in you, Mab, though I don’t want to flatter you: and even in looks a year or two may make a great difference——’

‘Will you stop! will you stop, please!’ said Mab; ‘Florry, stop! You make me ashamed. You make me feel as if——’

‘You were going in for it, too?’ said Florence calmly. ‘It makes me crazy, too, sometimes to think that—— But so long as girls are poor, and a man, just because they please him, can change everything for them—how can we help it? Even if you were to work, as people say, what difference would it make? I could perhaps make my living—and Emmy—— But dear, dear, to think of the Hall beside any little breadwinning of ours——’

‘Don’t talk so, please,’ cried Mab, with a shiver. She was not a visionary at all, nor had she any sentiment to speak of. But she was very young, still something between a girl and a boy, and ashamed to hear those revelations which she only half understood; or, rather, did not understand at all.

‘Well, one needn’t talk,’ said Florry, with a slight emphasis on the word. ‘But though you mayn’t talk of it, you can’t stop a thing from being true.’

‘Let’s go out for a walk,’ said Mab, ‘a long walk, down by the Baron’s Wood and up by Durham Hill; or let’s go out on the river for a pull. Let us do something—one can’t stay quiet all this bright afternoon.’

‘I want so much to see them when they come back,’ said Florry. ‘I want to know what they think of him—if they saw him: and whether Emmy made any impression, and what happened.’

‘What could happen? Do you expect her to come home engaged to him?’ said Mab. ‘However well things may go, they could not go so quickly as that.’

‘I am not a fool,’ said Florry, with indignation. She stood at the little gate looking out wistfully along the road by which the ladies had gone. The great trees hung over the wall which bounded there the nearest corner of the demesne of the Swinfords; the lodge and gate were just round the corner out of sight. It was too soon to expect them to come back. ‘Unless Mrs. Swinford had been out,’ said Florry. ‘She might be out, you know, and then they’d be back directly.’

‘She never goes out,’ said Mab; ‘it’s too cold for her here.’

‘Or she might not receive them very well, and then they would only stay a few minutes. You are so indifferent, you don’t care a bit what has happened: and I am on pins and needles till I know.’

‘Then I shall go for a walk by myself.’

‘Don’t do that,’ said Florry, putting out her hand to stay her cousin. She stood thus for a moment with her head turned towards the Hall, but her hand clutching Mab, gazing in one direction while her person inclined towards the other. She drew a long breath, and turned at last from her fixed gaze. ‘They must,’ she said, sighing again, ‘have stayed to tea. Yes, I’ll go on the river if you like; but let us go round home on the way and fetch Jim.’

‘Jim!’ said Mab. ‘He’ll want to scull, and I prefer to scull myself.’

‘Oh, he doesn’t mind. He is as lazy as—— He’ll steer and let us pull as long as ever you please. I don’t know anybody so lazy as Jim.’

‘We should be better by ourselves,’ said Mab; ‘not that heavy weight in the stern of the boat. When we go by ourselves it’s no weight at all.’

‘He’ll steer,’ said Florry; ‘it’s better to have some one to steer. And don’t you see it will keep him out of mischief for one afternoon.’

‘You have always another reason behind,’ said Mab. ‘It never is just the thing you think of, but something at the back of it.’

‘Well,’ said Florry soothingly, ‘it’s always so, don’t you know, where there’s a family. You are so lonely, you have no brothers and sisters. If you do well, then everything is all right. But our being right depends upon so many things: First, if papa is in good humour, and if Jim is going straight. Emmy and I have little questions between ourselves, of course, but these are the chief ones. Now, you have only Aunt Emily to think of, and she neither gets into rages nor goes wrong.’

‘I should hope not,’ said Mab, indignantly.

‘It is all very well for you to throw up your head like that; but we cannot do it. We must manage the best we can. Mab, I do often wish there could be a change.’

This was said when she had at last torn herself away from the road to the Hall, and the two girls were walking towards the Rectory and the river.

‘What sort of change?’

‘Oh! anything. That Jim should go away, or that he should do something dreadful that couldn’t be forgiven—or that Emmy should marry. I would even marry myself—any one! to make a change in the family and get away.’

‘I should think, however bad things may be, that they would be worse if you were all separated and not knowing what happened to each other. And what is there so very bad? You are all happy enough for anything one can see.’

‘That is the worst of it,’ said Florry, ‘we are all pretending about everything. It’s just one big lie all round—and it isn’t right to tell lies, or at least the Bible says so. There is papa breaks every one of the commandments, you know.’

‘Florry, don’t tell stories of Uncle James; I am very fond of him, and I won’t have it.’

‘It’s true all the same. I don’t say it’s his fault, it’s Jim’s fault. Papa swears—he does, he can’t help it, at Jim, and then pretends it’s something else—the gardener, or the overseer, or the poor people, or even poor Dash—that makes him so angry. Isn’t that lying? Then mamma pretends Jim has doubts and won’t go in for the Church because of them, when she knows very well what it is really he has been sent down for. And Jim pretends that he is going back to Cambridge next term, and that he is quite friendly with all the dons, and came down to read—I’ve heard him say that.’

‘It may not be true,’ said Mab, doubtfully, ‘but I shouldn’t call that lying—why should we all go and tell that poor Jim has not been good? What have the other people to do with it? Mother says we’re not called upon to give them any information—and she just says the same as you do: but that is not to lie.’

‘We are all pretending, every one,’ said Florry. ‘Emmy and I are by way of knowing nothing at all. I believe Jim thinks we don’t know anything. So we have to pretend not only to other people, but to him in our very own house, and papa too. I have heard papa say, “Thank Heaven, the girls at least know nothing,” and mamma, the dreadful, dreadful liar that she is, thanks Heaven too, though she knows very well that we knew as soon as she did, and that she couldn’t keep anything from us two. If you think of that, Mab, and just imagine how we go on pretending to each other, and to everybody.

‘Now, if Jim were to go off to a ranche, as people advise, we should all be very wretched, and probably it would be his ruin, but it would be a little relief all the same. Or if Emmy were to get hold of this man—oh, it may be odious, and you may cry out, but it would be a great relief. There would be her wedding to think about, and her things, and altogether it would be a change for everybody; and then she could do something for Jim.’

‘Her husband could, you mean?’

‘It is the same thing: he would, for his own sake, not to have an idle brother always about. It is killing all of us. One could bear it, perhaps; but four all bearing it—all pretending something different, as I tell you; Emmy and I not to know; mamma and papa that it’s another thing altogether that vexes them. Oh! we get exasperated sometimes to that degree, we could tear each other to pieces just to make a change.’

‘You are so exaggerated, Florry; mother always says so. You make a mountain out of a molehill.’

‘I just wish Aunt Emily had our molehill for a little while—just for a little while—to see how she liked it. What a lucky woman she is to have only a girl! Nothing very bad can ever happen to you, Mab, or come to her through you. You may be dull, perhaps, just two women, one opposite to the other——’

‘Dull! mother and I? Never. We don’t know what it is to be dull!’

‘Ah, that’s very well just now,’ said Florence, ‘you’re only seventeen; but wait a bit till you are older, especially if you don’t marry, and year goes on after year, and nothing ever happens. See whether you are not dull then. I don’t know which is worst,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘to have men in the family that make you miserable, or to have no men at all about to make any variety, but just women together, who never do any harm, but kill you with dulness. I really don’t know which is the worst.’

Mab was a little overwhelmed by this point of view. She was at the same time still indignant and resentful of the unexpected accusation. ‘When we begin to be dull,’ she said, ‘I’ll let you know—but I don’t see any reason for being so miserable. Poor Jim has never done anything so very bad. Sometimes he is silly——’

‘There you are quite wrong,’ said Florence, with great decision—‘he is not silly: I wish he were, then one might think he didn’t know any better; but even papa allows he is very clever. It is not from want of brains or sense either, if he would only be as good as he knows how—— ’

‘Oh, if that is your opinion! Mother thinks he is only weak, and does what people ask him.’

‘Aunt Emily is just as far out of it as you are. Does he ever do anything that we ask him? There is papa at him for ever—is he any the better for it? Weak! that is what people say, thinking it’s a kind of an excuse. I call it strong—to resist everything you ought to attend to, and take up everything you ought not. How can that be weak?’

‘I am sure I don’t know,’ said Mab; ‘I don’t understand about boys. Jim is the only one I ever knew intimately. But mother thinks if some one were to get hold of him in the right sort of way——’

‘What is the right sort of way? I suppose Aunt Emily thinks papa doesn’t know—nor any of us who have it to do; that is just the way with people. You are always thinking of a thing, thinking, and puzzling, and troubling: and then somebody comes in who has never spent ten minutes on it altogether, and says you are not taking the right way! Perhaps we are not; but who are they to pretend to know better? and since they are so wise, why don’t they tell us which is the right way?’

‘I am sure,’ cried Mab, ‘I never meant to make you angry, and mother is not one to interfere. She only said it to me. But since you’re so full of this, Florry, I think I had better go, and not trouble you any more, for I only wanted some fun, and you are thinking of nothing but trouble. I’ll run down to the water, and jump into a boat and have a little spin by myself.’

‘Oh, Mab, don’t,’ cried Florence, clutching her once more. ‘Here we are at our gate, just come in and ask him. He will come far more readily for you than for me.’

But it was with an ill grace that Mab followed her cousin through the Rectory kitchen garden, between the borders which veiled the lines of potatoes and cabbages. It might be flattering to suppose her capable of it, but she had not any desire to fill the place of missionary and guiding influence to her cousin Jim.