'But I must, Daisy, for it is true. Oh, if you had only been a naughty little girl!'
'What—and had it out then?' said Daisy, who was lying across the bed, and put her golden head caressingly on Ethel's knee. 'If I had plagued you then, you would have broken me in out of self-defence.'
'Something like it,' said Ethel. 'But you know, Daisy, the little last treasure that mamma left did always seem something we could not make enough of, and it didn't make you fractious or tiresome—at least not to us—till we thought you could not be spoilt. And then I didn't see the little faults so soon as I ought; and I'm only an elder sister, after all, without any authority.'
'No, you're not to say that, Ethel, I mind your authority, and always will. You are never a bother.'
'Ah, that's it, Daisy! If I had only been a bother, you might never have got ahead of yourself.'
'Then you really think, like Charles Cheviot, that it was my doing, Ethel?'
'What do you think yourself?'
Great tears gathered in the corners of the blue eyes. Was it weak in Ethel not to bear the sight?
'My poor Daisy,' she said, 'yours is not all the burden! I ought not to have taken up such a giddy company, or else I should have kept the boy under my hand. But he is so discreet and independent, that it is more like having a gentleman staying in the house, than a child under one's charge; and one forgets how little he is; and I was as much off my balance with spirits as you. It was the flightiness of us all; and we have only to be thankful, and to be sobered for another time. I am afraid the pride about being reproved is really the worse fault.'
'And what do you want me to do?—to go and tell papa all about it? I mean to do that, of course; it is the only way to get comforted.'