“Hélas! oui, mon père. J’ai peur que j’étudie trop. Go on, Elizabeth, I’m afraid the bell will ring.”
Thus adjured, Elizabeth continued: “There are many young people whose predominant passion is a certain ill-humour, fretfulness, peevishness, or irritability, which pervades their words, manners, and even looks. It is usually brought into action by such mere trifles that there is no chance of peace for those who live in the house with them. Even their best friends are not always secure from their ill-tempered sallies, their quarrelsome moods. Pettish and perverse, they throw a gloom over the gayest hour, and the most innocent amusement. As this luckless disposition is peculiarly that of women, young girls cannot be too earnestly recommended to combat the tendency in youth, lest they become, when older, the torment of that society they are intended to bless and ornament.”
Another pause,—a short one this time. Elizabeth’s eyes met mine with an unspoken question, and I nodded acquiescence. “Tony!” we breathed simultaneously.
It was true. Tony’s engaging qualities were marred by a most prickly temper. We knew her value well. She played all games so admirably that the certainty of defeat modified our pleasure in playing with her. She was fleet of foot, ready of wit, and had more fun in her little brown head than all the rest of us could muster. She would plunge us into abysses of mischief with one hand, and extricate us miraculously with the other. She was startlingly truthful, and lived nobly up to our wayward but scrupulous standard of schoolgirl honour, to the curious code of ethics by which we regulated our lives. She might have been Elizabeth’s vice-regent; she might even have disputed the authority of our constitutional sovereign, and have led us Heaven knows whither, had it not been for her pestilential quarrelsomeness. How often had she and I started out at the recreation hour in closest amity, and had returned, silent and glowering, with the wide gravel walk between us. If she were in a fractious mood, no saint from Paradise could have kept the peace. Therefore, when Elizabeth looked at me, we said “Tony!” and then stopped short. She was our friend, one of the band, and though we granted her derelictions, we would not discuss them. We could be ribald enough at Adelaide Harrison’s expense, but not at Tony’s.
“Why don’t you lend her this book?” said Elizabeth kindly.
I shook my head. I knew why very well. And I rather think Elizabeth did, too.
By this time it looked as if we were going to fit the whole school with predominant passions, and not find any for ourselves; but the next line Elizabeth read struck a chill into my soul, and, as she went on, every word seemed like a barbed arrow aimed unswervingly at me.
“A propensity to extravagant partialities is a fault which frequently predominates in some warm, impetuous characters. These persons are distinguished by a precipitate selection of favourites in every society; by an overflow of marked attentions to the objects of their predilection, whose interests they espouse, whose very faults they attempt to justify, whose opinions they support, whether right or wrong, and whose cause they defend, often at the expense of good sense, charity, moderation, and even common justice. Woe to him who ventures to dissent from them. The friendship or affection of such characters does not deserve to be valued, for it results, not from discernment of merit, but from blind prejudice. Besides, they annoy those whom they think proper to rank among their favourites by expecting to engross their whole attention, and by resenting every mark of kindness they may think proper to show to others. However, as their affections are in general as short-lived as they are ardent, no one person is likely to be long tormented with the title of their friend.”
I was conscious of two flaming cheeks as we walked for a moment in silence, and I glanced at Elizabeth out of the tail of my eye to see if she were summing up my case. It wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true, that extravagant partialities (when they were my partialities) were short-lived. I was preparing to combat this part of the accusation when Elizabeth’s cool voice dispelled my groundless fears.
“I think that’s silly,” she said. “Nobody is like that.”