Katharine laughed and turned her head. She had been looking out of the window again and wondering whether the rain would stop after all. She and her sister had never lived very harmoniously together. Their pitched battles had begun in the nursery with any weapons they could lay hands on, pillows, moribund dolls, soapy sponges, and the nurse’s shoes. Though Katharine was the younger, she had soon been the stronger at close quarters. But Charlotte had the sharper tongue and was by far the better shot with any projectile when safely entrenched behind the bed. At the first show of hostilities she made for both sponges—a rag-doll was not a bad thing, if she got a chance to dip it into the basin, but there was nothing like a sponge, when it was ‘just gooey with soap,’ as the youthful Charlotte expressed it. She carried the art of throwing to a high degree of perfection, and on very rare occasions, after she was grown up, she surprised her adorers by throwing pebbles at a mark with an unerring accuracy which would have done credit to a poacher’s apprentice.
Since the nursery days the warfare had been carried on by words and the encounters had been less frequent, but the contrast was always apparent between Katharine’s strength and Charlotte’s quickness. Katharine waited, collected her strength, chose her language and delivered a heavy blow, so to say. Charlotte, as Frank Miner put it, ‘slung English all over the lot.’ Both were effective in their way. But they had the good taste to quarrel in private and, moreover, in many things they were allies. With regard to their father, Katharine took an evil and silent delight in her sister’s sarcasms, and Charlotte could not help admiring Katharine’s solid, unyielding opposition on certain points.
“Oh, yes!” said Katharine, answering Charlotte’s last remark. “There’ll be less change than ever now that you’re married.”
“I suppose so. Poor Kitty! We used to fight now and then, but I know you enjoyed looking on when I made a row at dinner. Didn’t you?”
“Of course I did. I’m a human being.” Katharine laughed again. “Won’t you really have tea? I always have it when I want it.”
“You brave little thing! Do you? Well—if you like. You quiet people always have your own way in the end,” added Mrs. Slayback, rather thoughtfully. “I suppose it’s the steady push that does it.”
“Don’t you have your way, too?” asked Katharine, in some surprise at her sister’s tone of voice.
“No. I’m ashamed to say that I don’t. No—” She seemed to be recapitulating events. “No—I don’t have my way at all—not the least little bit. I have the way of Benjamin Slayback of Nevada.”
“Why do you talk of your husband in that way?” enquired Katharine.
“Shall I call him Mr. Slayback?” asked Charlotte, “or Benjamin—dear little Benjamin! or Ben—the ‘soldier bold’? How does ‘Ben’ strike you, Kitty? I know—I’ve thought of calling him Minnie—last syllable of Benjamin, you see. There was a moment when I hesitated at ‘Benjy’—‘Benjy, darling, another cup of coffee?’—it would sound so quiet and home-like at breakfast, wouldn’t it? It’s fortunate that papa made us get up early all our lives. My dream of married happiness—a nice little French maid smiling at me with a beautiful little tea-tray just as I was opening my eyes—I had thought about it for years! Well, it’s all over. Benjamin Slayback of Nevada takes his breakfast like a man—a regular Benjamin’s portion of breakfast, and wants to feast his eyes on my loveliness, and his understanding on my wit, and his inner man on the flesh of kine—and all that together at eight o’clock in the morning—Benjamin Slayback of Nevada—there’s no other name for him!”