“[‘PRETTY!’ SAID NELL—‘PRETTY! WHY, SHE BLACKENS HER EYEBROWS, I’M CERTAIN.’]”
[“Pretty!”] said Nell, who had come up at his raised voice,—“pretty! Why, she blackens her eyebrows, I’m certain; and you should have seen her hat last Sunday—a green bird, some blue, lumpy plush, and a bunch of pink chiffon.”
“Upon my word,” said Pip,—he was white with [36] ]anger, and his eyes blazed,—“upon my word, I’ve got two nice sisters. Trust a girl for running down another pretty one. You’re jealous, that’s what it is, because you know you can’t hold a candle to her.”
“Her father sells kerosene and butter—he’s a grocer!” Nellie said, with a fine swerve of her delicate lips. “Upon my word, Pip, I should think, with all the pretty girls there are about here, you might fall in love with a lady.”
“She is a lady,” Pip contended hotly. “She works with her needle, perhaps—she’s not been brought up in selfish idleness like you girls—but her manners are a long sight better than yours, and she’d blush to say small-minded things like you do.”
It occurred to Meg that it was small-minded, and she said no more.
But there was nothing Nellie enjoyed more than a sparring match with her eldest brother when the advantage was on her side, and had he not called her a conceited chit?
“There’s one thing—you’d get your groceries at a reduction,” she said meditatively. “I think their sardines are only 5½d. a tin; they’d let you have them for 5d. perhaps, considering all you’ve spent in chocolates and eight-button gloves. Meg, I did [37] ]think that packet of lovely gloves in his bedroom was for his dear little sisters, until——”
“Until you forfeited them by your abominable behaviour!” Philip cried jesuitically.
But Nellie gave him a pitying glance. “Until I saw the size was too utterly impossible for the hands of ladies,—o-o-h, Pip, don’t, you hurt me—ah-h-h, you’re bruising my arm—stop it, Pip!”