"What?" exclaimed Rachel. She could hardly believe she heard aright.
"I have been giving him a lecture," repeated Gwen. "Husbands occasionally need one."
"My dear child what do you mean?" said her sister laying down her pen. "I had hoped you might have been having a nice helpful talk with him."
"Well, I hope it has been helpful to him."
"You sound as if you had been rather impertinent," said Rachel not pleased. "What have you been saying?"
"All husbands are alike," answered Gwen. "They get nice girls to marry them, taking them away from their homes, and no sooner have they got them than they seem to forget their existence. I have been studying husbands lately, that is to say since my friend Mabel married. Men are fearfully selfish."
Rachel looked gravely at her sister.
"Gwen, I advise you to wait to give out your opinions till you are a little older. You really talk like a very silly child. I hope if you have been saying anything impertinent to Luke that you will apologise to him before you are an hour older. I am quite horrified at you."
Rachel's face was flushed, and Gwen saw she was more angry with her than she had ever been in her life. But she was not daunted. Here was her favourite sister, whom she adored, tied for life to a man who was engrossed in his parish and had no time whatever to think of her. She felt boiling with rage.
"I certainly shall not apologise," she said, "it would take away any little good my words may have done. I think I have come to spy out the land none too soon, and that Luke will awake to see that what I have said anyhow has some sense in it, and that he will not let you carry the coal scuttle another time."