“Well!” said Amethyst, “I do enjoy everything so very much. I feel as if music, and dancing, and going out with mother, and having pretty things to wear, would be so very delightful. So if the most delightful things of all remind me that I mustn’t let myself go, but be temperate in all things, it ought to be getting some good out of the beauty, oughtn’t it?”
Amethyst spoke quite simply, as one to whom various little methods of self-discipline were as natural a subject of discussion as various methods of study.
“I hope you’ll never look different from what you did just now,” said Una, in a curious strained voice, and laying her head on her sister’s shoulder; “but it’s all going to begin.”
“Why, Una, what is it?” as the words ended in a stifled sob. “Headache again? You naughty child, I’m sure you want tonics, or sea air, or something. And I wish you would let me plait all this hair into a tail, it is much too hot and heavy for you.”
“Oh no, no! not now,” said Una, now fairly crying, “not just now—let it alone. I don’t want to be grown-up!”
“A tail doesn’t look grown-up,” said Amethyst in a matter-of-fact voice. “Any way there’s nothing to cry about. If you want to come down and see the people after dinner, you must lie still now and rest. But you ought to go to bed early, and get a good-night. When people cry for nothing, it shows they’re ill.”
“I dare say it does, but I’m not ill,” said Una.
“Then you’re silly,” said Amethyst, with cheerful briskness; but Una did not resent the tone. She gave Amethyst a long clinging kiss, and then lay back on the sofa; while her sister went off to arrange the jewels to her satisfaction, in preparation for the first state dinner-party at which she was to make her appearance.