Fay still looked angry. "I don't care a twopenny dam if I am abnormal or not. I never want to cling to anybody but Reggie."
I felt it was time to step in. I didn't want Fay to say anything to offend Annabel. "Of course you don't, darling, and I am only too delighted to be clung to to any extent; it is most warming and comforting to me. But I fear Annabel is right in regarding me as the old oak tree to which the ivy clings."
Fay slipped her hand into mine, under cover of the breakfast-table. "You aren't a bit old, Reggie!" she said indignantly. "Is he, Frank?"
"I've known older," replied Frank guardedly.
At this we all laughed—especially Annabel. Frank's jokes usually appealed to her, though Fay's didn't, which was strange, as the twins resembled each other mentally almost as much as they did physically: it was only in the deeper places of the spirit that the resemblance ended.
"Reggie is not old and he is not young," said Annabel; "I never can understand why people make such a fuss about their ages. I am forty-eight and Reggie is forty-three this year, and I make no bones about it, and it would be no good if I did, as it's in Burke and Debrett for all the world to read. And I really don't think, my dear Fay, that 'a twopenny dam' is at all a nice expression for a young lady to use: I cannot bear to hear women swear."
"It isn't swearing, Miss Kingsnorth," cried Frank, who was always ready to stick up for his sister; "it's a foreign coin which was much used by the great Duke of Wellington."
"So I've heard," replied Annabel, with doubt in her tone. "But all I can say is that if it isn't swearing, it sounds uncommonly like it, and I'm sure that any ordinary person hearing it would do Fay an injustice, and imagine that she was given to bad language."
I felt it was time to read the Riot Act and disperse the company; so I rose from the table and took my pipe out of my pocket, saying: "Come on, little girl, and watch me smoking in the garden. It will be a soothing, soporific sight."
Fay jumped up and followed me, as I knew she would. One of her most fascinating tricks was a habit she had of trotting about the house and garden after me like a little child. And yet in some things she was so much of a woman!