“Was she very agreeable?” asked Nelly, with the faintest tinge of sharpness in her manner.
“The most—what shall I call it?—inconsequent woman I ever met, mixing up things the most dissimilar together, and never dwelling for an instant on anything.”
“How base men are,” said Julia, with mock reproach in her voice. “This is the way he talks of a woman he absolutely persecuted with attentions the whole season. Would you believe it, Nelly, we cut up our nice little garden to make a school to train her horse in?”
Whether it was that some secret intelligence was rapidly conveyed from Julia as she spoke to Nelly, or that the latter of herself caught up the quizzing spirit of her attack, but the two girls burst out laughing, and George blushed deeply, in shame and irritation.
“First of all,” said he, stammering with confusion, “she had a little Arab, the wickedest animal I ever saw. It wasn't safe to approach him; he struck out with his forelegs—”
“Come, Nelly,” said Julia, rising, “we'll go into the drawing-room, and leave George to explain how he tamed the Arab and captivated the Arab's mistress, for your brother might like to learn the secret. You 'll join us, gentlemen, when you wish for coffee.”
“That was scarcely fair, Julia dear,” said Nelly, when they were alone. “Your banter is sometimes too sharp for him.”
“I can't help it, dearest—it is a part of my nature. When I was a child, they could not take me to a wild-beast show, for I would insist on poking straws at the tiger—not that poor dear George has much 'tiger' in him. But do you know, Nelly,” said she, in a graver tone, “that when people are very poor, when their daily lives are beset by the small accidents of narrow fortune, there is a great philosophy in a little banter? You brush away many an annoyance by seeming to feel it matter for drollery, which, if taken seriously, might have made you fretful and peevish.”
“I never suspected there was method in your madness, Ju,” said Nelly, smiling.
“Nor was there, dearest; the explanation was almost an afterthought. But come now and tell me about yourselves.”