Sophy took a cigarette, but she did not immediately light it. She put her slippered feet on the fender and continued her study of her sister’s face. Seen in the flicker of the firelight, with the brown curls falling about her shoulders, Peggy made a charming picture. She looked so surprisingly young and so full of the joy of life. But she was not young, Sophy reflected. In a few years she would be thirty, and after thirty a woman loses her youth.
“I like Doctor Fairbridge,” Sophy remarked, with an abruptness that caused the smile to fade, though the challenge did not, she observed, produce any other effect.
“So do I,” agreed Peggy.
“He is in love with you,” said Sophy.
“He thinks he is,” Peggy corrected. “I expect he often finds himself in that condition.”
“That’s hedging, Peggy. He isn’t half bad. You might do worse.”
“I might. I daresay I shall,” returned Peggy unmoved.
“You’ll die an old maid, my Pegtop; men are none too plentiful.”
“I can even contemplate that condition undismayed,” Peggy replied calmly. “The unmarried woman is the best off, if she would only recognise it. Marriage is—”
She paused, at a loss for a fitting definition, and during the pause Sophy lighted her cigarette and smoked it thoughtfully and looked into the fire.