“I should be very sorry if ever anything was said against my big brother.”
“The man’s a sneak who’s only and always praised,” Paul lucidly remarked. “If you didn’t hope to be finely abused where would be the encouragement?”
“Ay, but not with reason,” said Rosy, who always brightened to an argument.
“The better the reason the greater the incentive to expose one’s self. However, you won’t hear of it—if people do heave bricks at me.”
“I won’t hear of it? Pray don’t I hear of everything? I should like any one to keep anything from me!” And Miss Muniment gave a toss of her recumbent head.
“There’s a good deal I keep from you, my dear,” said Paul rather dryly.
“You mean there are things I don’t want, I don’t take any trouble, to know. Indeed and indeed there are: things I wouldn’t hear of for the world—that no amount of persuasion would induce me, not if you were to go down on your knees. But if I did, if I did, I promise you that just as I lie here I should have them all in my pocket. Now there are others,” the young woman went on, “there are special points on which you’ll just be so good as to enlighten me. When the Princess asked you to come and see her you refused and wanted to know what good it would do. I hoped you’d go then; I should have liked you to go, because I wanted to know how she lived and whether she really had things handsome or only in the poor way she said. But I didn’t push you, because I couldn’t have told you what good it would do you: that was only the good it would have done me. At present I’ve heard everything from Lady Aurora and that it’s all quite decent and tidy—though not really like a princess a bit—and that she knows how to turn everything about and put it best end foremost, just as I do, like, though I oughtn’t to say it, no doubt. Well, you’ve been, and more than once, and I’ve had nothing to do with it; of which I’m very glad now, for reasons you perfectly know—you’re too honest a man to pretend you don’t. Therefore when I see you going again I just inquire of you, as you inquired of her, what good does it do you?”
“I like it—I like it, my dear,” said Paul with his fresh, unembarrassed smile.
“I daresay you do. So should I in your place. But it’s the first time I have heard you express the idea that we ought to do everything we like.”
“Why not, when it doesn’t hurt any one else?”