Then she softened, and put her arms round her sister.
“Don’t make it so hard for me, Nell,” she said, almost with tears in her eyes; “there’s nothing in moderation I’d try to stop you, but you really must see I can’t let you grow intimate with these people.”
But Nellie had not responded with her usual sisterly hug and kiss. She wriggled away from the encircling arms and gave a little impatient toss of her head.
“What a fuss you make about things, Meg!” she said pettishly. “I do wish you’d leave me alone! I’m not a child, and I’m not going to be ordered about like one.”
[186]
]Then came the next war.
Cards for a dinner-party arrived from the “unsnubbable” Brownes—Bunty’s adjective.
“Put them in the fire,” Pip said. “No answer is the best for such people.”
If there had been some pretty faces among the feminine portion of the Browne household Pip would not have been so scornful of the overtures, but the girls were each and all undeniably plain. For the days that intervened between the arrival of the cards and the date of the dinner-party Meg was exceedingly busy.
She had a dressmaker in the house making winter frocks for Poppet and Essie; that took up much of her time. Besides this, two great cases of quinces and apples had been sent to them from Yarrahappini, and, with Martha’s help, she was converting them into jam and jelly.
Bunty also had been unwell, and from school a day or two, and Peter had one of his perverse fits upon him. She had not had time to give the Fitzroy-Brownes as much as a passing thought; and as the new daily governess made no complaint about Nellie’s morning studies she concluded all was going on well.