Accordingly nothing of the sort was ever said again, although it became perfectly obvious, in the course of another year or two, that Vonnie was "not quite like other children"—was, in fact, very, very slightly deficient mentally.
She was a quiet little girl, who could be intensely obstinate, with a hesitation in her always unready speech that hardly amounted to an impediment. She was tall and healthy looking, so that one scarcely realized her head to be too large, as it certainly was, for her body.
Little Lily loved Yvonne, her senior by two years, with the fierce, protective passion of a mother for a helpless child. It was a love that caused her the most acute suffering of which a sensitive and highly-strung child is capable, and the manifestations of which were sorrowfully described by her parents, in all good faith, as Lily's naughtiness, and tendency to impertinent interference.
It was naughty to rage and cry when Vonnie was punished for being obstinate or slow, it was impertinent to stamp and shout: "It's not fair! It's not fair!" when Vonnie was left at home, and Father and Mother were kind enough to take Lily out for a treat, such as a neighbouring garden-party, or a wedding, and it was naughtiest of all, when Vonnie was laughed at or admonished for not understanding things quickly, to interfere and cry out: "She can't help it—she is trying—it isn't fair to scold her!"
Lily knew that all these things were naughty, because she had always been told so, but the spirit of frenzy that possessed her always drove her on, the consciousness of naughtiness notwithstanding. Therefore at a very early age there was implanted in her the conviction that she had been sent into the world with a natural proclivity towards wrong-doing.
Both children knew that Lily was their parents' favourite. It would have been impossible not to know it. She might be sorrowfully reproached for her "disloyalty"—a favourite accusation—to the cardinal article of belief that Father and Mother always knew best, but she was never punished. Her prettiness and her precocious cleverness were exploited and praised to her face. She was sent for to the drawing-room whenever there were visitors, and taken out in the carriage to pay calls, and very often given small, unexpected presents and surprises by her mother, in which Vonnie's only share was to be told that "next time" it would be her turn.
It never was her turn, and Lily and Vonnie both knew that the "next time" of the promises would never come.
Paradoxically, it was far harder upon Lily than upon Vonnie. She had the greater capacity for suffering of the two, and a strong abstract sense of justice besides, that rendered her absolutely incapable of accepting uncritically an unfair situation. In addition, the ardour of her love for Vonnie was proportionate to the intensity of all her emotions.
Theoretically, one loved Father and Mother best of everybody in the world. In fact, it would have been a "disloyalty" of the very naughtiest kind to contemplate any other possibility. It was proper to love one's sister third in order, and Lily and Vonnie were both persuaded that to these regulations they must and did conform. Lily, at seven years old, naturally did not seek logically to reconcile this doctrine with the strange accesses of rage and rebellion against Father and Mother that seized her so frequently upon Vonnie's behalf.
Vonnie resented nothing, for herself. She was philosophical, humble-minded, and above all desirous of peace. The nursery storms raised by Lily in her defence were her chief source of grievance. She did not mind being left out of treats, very much. She minded the noise of Lily's angry screams, and Mother's argumentative reproaches, and the final grieved intervention of Father, very much more.