I remarked that fortunately there were, and then left the nursery. I should have been irritated with Ponty, but her unbounded admiration of Fay made me freely forgive her anything and everything. Still I wondered at her attitude, though I was fast learning not to be surprised at any vagary of the feminine mind, but just to accept it as one of the unfathomable mysteries.
Frank's presence at the Manor made a wonderful difference to Fay. He stimulated what I called the elfin side of her nature, and brought out those qualities which she possessed in common with him. I have frequently noticed that when members of the same family are together, all the family traits rise to the surface, while individual characteristics fall into abeyance for the time being. The unit is, so to speak, merged in the tribe.
I remarked upon this one day at breakfast.
"I know what you mean," said Frank. (The Wildacres were always very quick to catch an idea.) "The Joneses become all Jones, and the Smiths become all Smith at their Christmas family dinner, and the separate Johns and Roberts and Marias, with their individual characteristics, are swallowed up in the great Nirvana of Jonesism and Smithism."
"And Jonesism and Smithism are consequently tremendously intensified," Fay chimed in; "it is only at such family gatherings that one realises the hugeness of the Jones nose, or the bitterness of the Smith temper. I expect when all the Hapsburgs are together the size of their historical under lip becomes something stupendous."
"I do not quite see how a Christmas party can lengthen anybody's nose or swell their under lip," remarked Annabel, full of patient endeavour to discover a grain of sense in all the chaff of our nonsense.
"Unless it ended in a fight," suggested Frank.
"Oh, of course, in that case it might; but I thought you were talking of friendly family gatherings."
"So we were, Annabel," I explained; "Fay and Frank were only speaking figuratively." I was always so dreadfully afraid that my sister would consider Fay foolish.
Fay went on with the conversation. It was a matter of absolute indifference to her whether Annabel considered her foolish or not, and this grieved me, as I was so anxious for Annabel to do my darling justice, and I could see that Fay herself sometimes rendered this difficult. "But when members of a family marry," she said, "and go to houses of their own, their respective personalities develop, and what Frank calls the Jones-and-Smith Nirvana is broken up. Then we see that what we imagined to be a complete tea-set was really a collection of separate pieces of different kinds of china."