Pip felt he had done his duty for the time when he spoke a word in season to Peter and threatened “hidings” innumerable if he waxed obstreperous.
But the aide-de-camp was tried and proved wanting,—all the trouble that followed came through her.
Meg, who desired everything to go on smoothly and pleasantly, made a point of consulting Nellie in many things, and treating her as an equal in age. As it happened, it was the worst policy she could [181] ]adopt just then, for it strengthened the younger girl’s growing ideas of independence.
A little firmness—a mother’s firmness—and the enforcement of unquestioned authority at this juncture would have saved her from many a subsequent heartache. But alas! there was no mother, and Meg’s rule was certainly not despotic, though it was firm in its way, and answered excellently with the young ones.
“Where are you going, Nell?” she said one afternoon, going up into the bedroom, and finding her young sister in the midst of as elaborate a toilet as her simple clothes would allow.
“Up to Trafalgar House for tennis, that’s all!” Nell replied, in a tone whose studied nonchalance was somewhat overdone.
Meg fairly gasped. Was she going to have open rebellion among her subjects as soon as this?
“You are going to do nothing of the kind, I hope,” she said, with considerable warmth in her tone. “What are you thinking of? Of course you can’t accept hospitality from people we refuse to visit!”
“Oh, that’s all nonsense!” Nellie replied, fluffing a strand of hair backward with the comb and pinning it up into a roll. “I consider Esther and you were very rude and unneighbourly not to call [182] ]on them, and it’s no reason I should be impolite as well!”
