"A minute ago, I thought it wasn't fair of you," she said reflectively. "I can see it will be awfully hard to get us all peacefully grown up. Betty will have the best of it. I shall simply give in to her right along the line. I can see that. I really couldn't stand the worry of it."
"I suppose you wouldn't have gone to the flower show without Jean?" asked Mabel in rather a scornful way.
"Good gracious, no," said Elma simply. "I should have presented her with the one and only ticket, just for the sake of peace."
"That's a rotten, weak way to behave," said Mabel, with a touch of Cuthbert's best manner.
"I know. I don't mean that you should have given her the ticket. You weren't made to be bullied. I was. I feel it in my bones every time any one is horrid to me."
"I'm getting tired of giving up to others," said Mabel, still on her determined tack. "You can't think what it has been during these years. I mustn't do this and that because of the children. It's always been like that. And now when I'm longing to go to dances and balls, I've got to go right off after dinner and play Mozart with Betty. It's all very well for papa, he hasn't had the work I've had. If I play now, I want to play something better than a tum-tum accompaniment."
"Mozart isn't tum-tum," said Elma, "and papa has been listening to us all these years. It must have been very trying."
"Well, all I can say is that, at his time of life, he ought to be saved from hearing Betty scrape on her fiddle every night as she does nowadays. Instead, you would think he hadn't had one musical daughter, he's so keen on the latest."
"Miss Annie says it never does to be selfish," said Elma gravely. "I think that's being selfish, the way you talk."
Mabel stopped at the unclasping of her waist-belt.