'What can you mean?' said Helen; 'I am sure I am not melancholy.'
'I am sure you shun the noise of folly,' said Elizabeth.
'I am sorry you consider all our merriment as folly,' said Anne, hoping to save Helen.
'Indeed I do not,' said Elizabeth; 'it was no more folly than a kitten's play, and quite as much in the natural course of things.'
'Helen's occupation being out of the natural course of things,' said Anne, 'I should think she was better employed than we were.'
'In making a noise,' said Elizabeth; 'so were we, I do not see much difference.'
'O Lizzie, it was not the same thing!' said Helen, exceedingly mortified at being laughed at for what she considered as a heroic piece of self-denial, and so it was, though perhaps not so great in her as it would have been in one who was less musical, and more addicted to the noise of folly.
'How touchy Helen is this evening!' thought Elizabeth; 'I had better let her alone, both for her sake and my own.'
'How foolish I was to interfere!' thought Anne; 'it was the most awkward thing I ever did; I only roused the spirit of contradiction, and did Helen more harm than good; I never will meddle between sisters again.'
Presently after, Elizabeth asked Harriet Hazleby whether she had ever been at Winchester.