“Gently scan your brother man,
Still gentlier sister woman,
An’ if they gang a trifle wrang
To step aside is human.”
That was the first battle; another followed quickly on its heels; and then there came a long and sorrowful peace.
Meg had been exceedingly angry about it—and with justice. She marvelled, not only at Nellie’s rebellion, but that she should care to mix with such “impossible” people, as she called them.
“It isn’t as if they were merely homely and uneducated,” she said; “but their vulgarity and pretentiousness are enough to make any one sick!”
However, as Nellie was very quiet—docile even—after the one outbreak, and as it was not possible to keep up an unfriendly spirit for ever, she thought she had better overlook it as a first and last offence; [185] ]more especially as she remembered her own mad infatuation for Aldith MacCarthy, when she had been even older than Nell was now.
But she warned her with much resolution in her tone.
“You only leave me one course, Nellie,” she said. “I have been left in charge, and if you won’t obey orders—I’m sure I try to give as few as possible—I shall be compelled to write to Mr. Hassal and ask him either to send you to school till father comes back or else to let some one come here whose authority you will respect.”