“My poor child, I AM interested!” smiled Francie. “Ain’t I interested, father?”
“Well, I don’t know how you could act differently to show it.”
“Well, I do then,” said Delia. “And if you don’t make Mr. Flack understand I will.”
“Oh I guess he understands—he’s so bright,” Francie vaguely pleaded.
“Yes, I guess he does—he IS bright,” said Mr. Dosson. “Good-night, chickens,” he added; and wandered off to a couch of untroubled repose.
His daughters sat up half an hour later, but not by the wish of the younger girl. She was always passive, however, always docile when Delia was, as she said, on the war-path, and though she had none of her sister’s insistence she was courageous in suffering. She thought Delia whipped her up too much, but there was that in her which would have prevented her ever running away. She could smile and smile for an hour without irritation, making even pacific answers, though all the while it hurt her to be heavily exhorted, much as it would have done to be violently pushed. She knew Delia loved her—not loving herself meanwhile a bit—as no one else in the world probably ever would; but there was something funny in such plans for her—plans of ambition which could only involve a “fuss.” The real answer to anything, to everything her sister might say at these hours of urgency was: “Oh if you want to make out that people are thinking of me or that they ever will, you ought to remember that no one can possibly think of me half as much as you do. Therefore if there’s to be any comfort for either of us we had both much better just go on as we are.” She didn’t however on this occasion meet her constant companion with that syllogism, because a formidable force seemed to lurk in the great contention that the star of matrimony for the American girl was now shining in the east—in England and France and Italy. They had only to look round anywhere to see it: what did they hear of every day in the week but of the engagement of somebody no better than they to some count or some lord? Delia dwelt on the evident truth that it was in that vast vague section of the globe to which she never alluded save as “over here” that the American girl was now called upon to play, under providence, her part. When Francie made the point that Mr. Probert was neither a count nor a lord her sister rejoined that she didn’t care whether he was or not. To this Francie replied that she herself didn’t care, but that Delia ought to for consistency.
“Well, he’s a prince compared with Mr. Flack,” Delia declared.
“He hasn’t the same ability; not half.”
“He has the ability to have three sisters who are just the sort of people I want you to know.”
“What good will they do me?” Francie asked. “They’ll hate me. Before they could turn round I should do something—in perfect innocence—that they’d think monstrous.”