“I don’t know what I shall do with Meg,” Helen retorted, collapsing upon the stairs. “She’s got Wilcox and Box upon the brain. Meg, Meg, I don’t love the young gentleman; I don’t love the young gentleman, Meg, Meg. Can a body speak plainer?”
“Most certainly her love has died,” asserted Fräulein Mosebach.
“Most certainly it has, Frieda, but that will not prevent me from being bored with the Wilcoxes if I return the call.”
Then Helen simulated tears, and Fräulein Mosebach, who thought her extremely amusing, did the same. “Oh, boo hoo! boo hoo hoo! Meg’s going to return the call, and I can’t. ’Cos why? ’Cos I’m going to German-eye.”
“If you are going to Germany, go and pack; if you aren’t, go and call on the Wilcoxes instead of me.”
“But, Meg, Meg, I don’t love the young gentleman; I don’t love the young—0 lud, who’s that coming down the stairs? I vow ’tis my brother. O crimini!”
A male—even such a male as Tibby—was enough to stop the foolery. The barrier of sex, though decreasing among the civilized, is still high, and higher on the side of women. Helen could tell her sister all, and her cousin much about Paul; she told her brother nothing. It was not prudishness, for she now spoke of “the Wilcox ideal” with laughter, and even with a growing brutality. Nor was it precaution, for Tibby seldom repeated any news that did not concern himself. It was rather the feeling that she betrayed a secret into the camp of men, and that, however trivial it was on this side of the barrier, it would become important on that. So she stopped, or rather began to fool on other subjects, until her long-suffering relatives drove her upstairs. Fräulein Mosebach followed her, but lingered to say heavily over the banisters to Margaret, “It is all right—she does not love the young man—he has not been worthy of her.”
“Yes, I know; thanks very much.”
“I thought I did right to tell you.”
“Ever so many thanks.”