JOSEPHINE. It’s a long time about it! You are so difficult to please. And poor Mr. Royston, I suppose, will be snubbed like the rest!
JULIA (reprovingly). Josephine! surely you don’t imagine—
JOSEPHINE. That there is some attraction for him here? Of course I do! It can’t be Aunt Martha—nor I! I’m only a child! (with affected humility).
JULIA. Josephine, you speak as though you were piqued, vexed—I might almost say envious!
JOSEPHINE. Envious? I? Of what?
JULIA (sighing). Of what, indeed! Ah, dear one, the privileges of an elder sister are not so enviable after all! What is often her lot?—to be constantly exposed to flattery—adulation from the lips of strangers—compelling her to assume an extreme reserve in order to modify the exaggerated and at times indelicate encomiums of relatives and friends. What is the necessary result? Doubt, distrust, suspicion—nay, even prejudice, oftentimes unjust, against those who profess a desire to please! On this impulse I have acted—an impulse dictated by self-respect and a due sense of my own dignity!
JOSEPHINE (aside). What a serious tone! (Aloud.) But just think how cruelly, how unjustly you may have acted. And I’m sure, as for Mr. Royston—
JULIA. Mr. Royston again! Silly child!
JOSEPHINE. Child? Perhaps I could mention a little fact that—that—but I won’t! (Aside.) Good-by to my secret if I did! (Aloud.) Good-by!
JULIA. Are you going to leave me too?