Cuthbert laughed—an irrepressible little laugh, as if he could not help it. "Look here, Cousin Janetta," he said, "I'm awfully sorry, but I really can't help it. The idea of you as a duenna and of Wyvis as a heavy father has been tickling me ever since yesterday, and I shall have to have it out sooner or later. I assure you it's only a nervous affection. If I didn't laugh, I might cry or faint, and that would be worse, you know."
"I don't quite see the joke," said Janetta, gravely.
"The joke," said Cuthbert, "lies in the contrast between yourself and the role you have taken upon you."
"It is a role that I am obliged to take upon me," interposed Janetta; "because my sisters have no father, and a mother whose health makes it impossible for her to guard them as she would like to do."
"Now you're going to be severe," said Cuthbert; "and indeed I am guiltless of anything but a little harmless fooling. I can but tender my humblest apologies, and assure you that I have resigned my post in Mrs. Smith's educational establishment, and that I will keep my flowers in future to myself, unless I may send them with your consent and that of my authoritative elder brother."
Janetta was not mollified. "It is easy for you to talk of it so lightly," she said, "but you forget that you might have involved both my sisters in serious trouble."
"Don't you think I should have been able to get them out again?" said Cuthbert, with all the lightness to which she objected. "Don't you think that I could have pacified the schoolmistress? There is one thing that I must explain. My fancy for teaching was a fad, undertaken for its own sake, which led me accidentally at first to Mrs. Smith's school. I did not know that your sisters were there until I had made my preliminary arrangements."
Janetta flushed deeply, and did not reply. Nora's imagination had been more active than she expected. Cuthbert, who was watching her, saw the flush and the look of surprise, and easily guessed what had passed between the sisters.
"Did you ever read Sheridan's 'Rivals?'" he asked, quietly. "Don't you remember the romantic heroine who insisted on her romance? She would hardly consent to marry a man unless he had a history, and would help her to make one for herself?"
"I don't think that Nora is at all like Lydia Languish."