Fayette slightly raised her black eyebrows. She knew her cousin’s way of squaring her duty with her inclination.
“I presume, too, that the boy has quite exaggerated the case. Persons of that class always like to make a sensation, and I dare say Sue only meant that mother had a little cold. She has such a habit of talking to all sorts of people as if they were her equals.”
“Yes, I think Sue does rather look upon human beings as if they were her fellow-creatures,” said Fayette.
“I don’t profess to understand sarcasm,” said Helen, setting her rather thin lips very straight. “Papa and Dick will be at home to-morrow, and one night can make no very great difference to Sue. It would be a serious disadvantage to me to lose this lecture. I have the notes of the whole set, and this is the last, and I should never be satisfied to leave them in that unfinished state.”
“And suppose you were not satisfied? What then?” said Fayette.
For a moment Helen had an odd sensation, as though some one had suddenly lifted a curtain and given her a glimpse of an unsuspected near and unpleasing region; but the feeling passed, and left behind it a sense of vexation with her cousin.
“Persons who do not care for intellectual pleasures can never understand what they are to others,” said Helen, with a superior and pitying smile, which provoked Fayette. “As the professor said last night, it is the first duty of every one to develop his or her nature to its highest capacities, and to seize every opportunity for mental enlargement.”
“Fiddlesticks!” thought the irreverent Fayette; but she did not say it, and that at least was something.
“Then it would not be polite to the Allisons to go off in this way, and when company is coming to tea, too. Mr. Allison is gone, and the ladies won’t be home till nearly tea time. How it would look to go off!”
“We could leave a message; and, Helen, if Sue were nervous and fanciful,—and I don’t think she is,—it would only be one more reason for not leaving her alone. I shall go,” concluded Fayette, with sudden decision.