For the life of her, Alma could not restrain the colour which came into her face. She was in a rather unamiable mood just then, as we have said, and now she felt stung to retort.
“Whoever ‘he’ is, or isn’t, which is nearer the truth, I should be sorry to scrape together such a tenth-rate brigade as you seem to delight in gathering round you. And now having shown how intensely and objectionably silly you can make yourself, Constance, how would it be to start off on your walk and leave me in peace?”
“Well, that is a nice way to talk to your sister, I must say, Alma,” said Mrs Wyatt, entering the room in time to hear the latter half of the above remark.
“Pooh, mother. What odds!” cried Constance, maliciously. “Alma’s only mad because I chaffed her about her mysterious ‘mash.’”
“My dear Connie, don’t use those vulgar words,” expostulated the mother, but in a very different tone to that employed when speaking to her elder daughter. The younger went on—
“It’s a fact, mother. Alma has made a mysterious ‘mash’ while she was away. She’s as close as death about it, but I’ve drawn her at last. Don’t you see now why she can’t tear herself loose from her beloved Swiss views? All enchanted land, don’t you know.”
Mrs Wyatt sniffed, and up went her virtuous nose into the air, sure prelude to the coming storm.
“Ah well, my dear,” she said, in her most aggrieved and acidulated tone. “Ah well, we can’t all have uncles and aunts to think that nothing’s good enough for us, to take us frisking round the world. And I’m afraid such changes are not for everybody’s good. Apt to make them return home more dissatisfied, more discontented than ever.” And emitting another sniff, Mrs Wyatt paused and awaited the reply which she expected and ardently hoped for.
But it did not come. More and more repellent to Alma did these almost daily wrangles become. The girl’s fine nature scorned and loathed them, recognising their tendency to degrade and lower the self-respect of all parties concerned; indeed, there were times when it was as much as she could do to keep herself from extending that scorn and loathing to their originator.
Thus disappointed, Mrs Wyatt nagged on, saying a few of the most stinging things she could think of—stinging because unjust and untrue—to move her daughter to a reply; but still it didn’t come. At last, pushing back her chair, with a sigh Alma said—