Magda shut her lips.
"Why did you not send Pen, as I told you?"
"I forgot."
"You always do forget. There is more dependence to be put upon Francie than upon you. You think of nothing, and care for nothing, except your own concerns. I am disappointed in you. It seems sometimes as if you had no sense of duty. And you ought to leave off giving way to temper as you do. It is so unlike your sisters. Nothing ever seems right with you."
"I can't help it. It isn't my fault."
"Then you ought to help it. You are not a little child any longer."
Mrs. Royston hesitated, as if about to say more; but Magda held up her head with an air of indifference, though invisible tears were scorching the backs of her eyes; and with a sigh she left the room. Magda would let no tear fall. She was angry, as well as unhappy.
Why should she be always the one in disgrace—and never Pen? True, Pen was careful, and neat, and sensible. All through girlhood Pen had been in the right. She had done her lessons, not indeed brilliantly, but with punctuality and exactness. Her hair was always neat; her stockings were always darned; her room was always in order; she never forgot what she undertook to do; she never gave a message upside-down or wrong end before. While Magda—but it is enough to say that in all these items she was the exact reverse of Penrose.
This week she in her turn had charge of the school-room, which was also the play-room. And the result, but for thoughtful Merryl, would have been "confusion worse confounded." Mr. Royston was wont to declare that when his second daughter passed through a room, she left such traces as are commonly left by a tropical cyclone. There was some truth in the remark, if Magda happened to be in a tumultuous mood.
Penrose had her faults, as well as Magda, though somehow she was seldom blamed for them. She had a knack of being always in the right, at least to outward appearance. No doubt her faults were exaggerated by Magda; but they did exist. She wanted the best of everything for herself; she alone must be popular; she could not endure that Magda should do anything better than she did; she was not always strictly true. Magda saw and felt these defects; but nobody else seemed to be aware of them; and she could prove nothing. If she tried, she only managed to get into hot water, while Pen was sure to come off with flying colours.