But her elder sister shook her head at this heresy. "It may please you, Molly, for the present; but wait until our clothes get very shabby and we want a change from those we have been wearing so long," she said in a serious tone.
"Well, it will be time enough, as you say, when we have got to do it, so we won't begin worrying over it now. I am just taking a little extra care of my best dresses, to make sure that they look nice as long as possible, that I may not want new ones yet awhile. What are you laughing at me for, Arthur?" she suddenly asked.
"I am not laughing at you, Molly, but at something that happened at the shop."
"Oh, Arthur, don't call it a shop!" interrupted his elder sister crossly. "Say office if you like, we shall know what you mean. I expect Aunt Mary will go on when she hears what you have done."
"It is about Lady Mary I was laughing," said Arthur.
He never would call her Aunt Mary, for the two seemed to take a delight in annoying each other when they met, and Mr. Murray had never tried to smooth matters between them. She, too, was quite as prejudiced against him, because he was generally the ringleader in the mischief her son had often got into when they were both younger. In her anger over some escapade that had caused her annoyance, she had told Arthur she would never own him as a relative again, and he had retorted that he would never call her aunt any more; and both had kept their word, and harboured a dislike for each other ever since.
So Arthur recounted with great glee that a letter sent by Lady Mary, with some money in it, had been lost in the post, and then he asked Molly to imagine what the scene would be like when she went to the local post office and demanded her money back.
Molly laughed and mimicked the lady, and she and Arthur were trying to outdo each other in imitating her mannerisms when Annie suddenly said: "You stupid things, cannot you see that this may be very serious for Arthur? He has to open the letter-bag at Brading's, and she might—they might—there is no telling what people might say."
"Pigs might fly," suggested the irreverent Molly.
"Aunt Mary might say spiteful things about you, Arthur, if she heard that you had the handling of her letters."