It had taken all the time you have been looking at the room for the girls to kiss each other and say little half-laughing, half-crying words. Then Nellie forced Meg into the wicker chair, and knelt down herself, with her arms round her sister’s waist.
[96]
]“You darling,” she said. “Oh, Meg, how glad I am! Dear, dear Meg, I do hope you’ll be happy—impossibly happy.”
It was the first connected sentence either of them had spoken.
“I couldn’t be happier,” was Meg’s whisper.
“But always, always, dear—even when your hair is white, and there are wrinkles here and here and here.” She touched the smooth cheeks and brow with tender fingers.
There was a little silence fraught with love, the two bright heads leaning together; then Meg spoke, shyly, hesitatingly:
“Alan—Nell dear—you do—like him?”
“Oh, he’s well enough—oh yes, I’m very fond of Alan,” said Nell. “Of course I don’t consider him half good enough, though, for you.”
“Oh, Nellie!” Meg looked quite distressed. “Why, it is the other way, of course. He is so clever—oh! you don’t know how clever; and I am such a stupid thing.”
“Very stupid,” assented Nellie; but her smile differed.