“Listen? Bai Jove, how you do talk! I didn’t listen; you came and raved it all at me. And so she shall go, shall she?”
“Yes!” exclaimed Laura, firing up, and speaking viciously, “that she shall—a deceitful creature! I see through all her plots and plans, and I’ll—”
“Tear her eyes out, won’t you, my dear, eh? Now just look here, Laury: you think me slow, and all that sort of fun, and that I don’t see things; but I’m not blind. So the big boy has kicked off his allegiance, has he? and run mad after the little governess, has he? and the big sister is very angry and jealous!”
“Jealous, indeed!” cried Laura—“and of a creature like that!”
“All right; only don’t interrupt,” said Max mockingly. “Jealous, I said, and won’t put up with it, and quite right too! But, all the same, I’m not going to have her sent away.”
“And why not, pray?” cried Laura with flashing eyes.
“Because I don’t choose that she shall go,” said Max coolly.
Laura started, and then in silence brother and sister sat for a few moments gazing in each other’s eyes, a flood of thought sweeping the while across the brain of the latter as she recalled a score of little things till then unnoticed, or merely attributed to a natural desire to flirt; but, with the key supplied by Max Bray’s last words, Laura felt that she could read him with ease, and her brow contracted as she tried to make him shrink; but that did not lie in her power.
“Max!” she exclaimed at last, “I’m ashamed of you! It’s mean, and contemptible, and base, and grovelling! I’m disgusted! Why, you’ll be turning your eyes next to the servants’ hall!”
“Thank you, my dear!” drawled Max. “Very high-flown and grand! But I shall be content at present with the schoolroom. And now suppose I say I’m ashamed of you; and, bai Jove, I am! A girl of your style and pretensions, instead of winking at what you’ve seen, or coming to your brother for counsel, to go howling about the house—”