She gave me her attention again. “No, I couldn’t be,” she threw at me with a hint of defiance; and before I had time to reply, continued, “I was angry with Arthur for coming back. To go into service! I almost quarrelled with mother over that. She was so weak about it. She hated his being so far away. She didn’t seem to mind anything as long as she could get him home again. But Arthur’s more like my father. He’s got a strain of Jervaise-worship in him, somewhere.”
“A very strong strain, just now,” I suggested.
She laughed. “Yes, he’s Brenda’s slave; always will be,” she said. “But I don’t count her as a Jervaise. She’s an insurgée like me—against her own family. She’d do anything to get away from them.”
“Well, she will now,” I said, “and your brother, too.”
That seemed to annoy her. “It may sound easy enough to you,” she said, “but it’s going to be anything but easy. You can’t possibly understand how difficult it’s going to be.”
“Can’t you tell me?” I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders as if she had suddenly become tired of my questions, perhaps of myself, also.
“You’re so outside it all,” she said.
“I know I am,” I admitted. “But—I don’t want to remain outside.”
“I don’t know why I’ve been telling you as much as I have,” she returned.