“Oh, my mouth,” cried Maudie, with a look at herself in the glass, “my mouth is a regular shark’s mouth!”
At this the two girls fell to laughing as heartily as if they were discussing the merits of some animal rather than one of themselves.
“In short,” Julia went on, when they had somewhat recovered themselves, “in short, you and I have got to consider, first and foremost, what we can do to be original. We are not beauties, although mother, poor dear lady, persists that we have inherited an amount of beauty which is absolutely fatal. Dress us in an ordinary manner and we should look horrid. If we want to be any good in the world at all, we must do something a bit out of the common.”
“Follow in our mother’s footsteps?” said Maudie.
“Not a bit of it. What good does mother do by all her strenuous efforts to improve the condition of women? Is mother’s condition one that requires improvement? Not a bit of it. Is our condition one that requires improvement? Not a bit of it.”
“We don’t know yet,” said Maudie in a quiet, sensible tone.
“No, we don’t. And until we get married and see how we get on with our respective husbands, we shall have to remain in our ignorance. One thing is very certain, Maudie, that neither you nor I are girls that can go in leading-strings. We have been made original and unconventional and independent; in fact, originality and unconventionalism and independence have been rammed down our throats from the time we could remember anything. It has been the key-note of mother’s life. But we have, before we can do anything in our own set, to see to our room and arrange all our things. Now that old playroom is just as we left it. It’s an awfully jolly room, capable of great things in the way of adornment. We must get daddy to have it done up for us, and to give us a certain amount for furnishing it. And we must have a piano.”
“A piano?” said Maudie. “I don’t think a piano is at all a necessary article. Clean paper and paint, a decent something to walk on—yes, that we can fairly ask father to give us, and I’m sure he won’t grudge it; but seeing that neither you, nor I, nor mother knows one tune from another, and that there is a piano that cost a hundred and twenty guineas in the drawing-room, I don’t think it would be fair to ask father to spend even half that sum in such an instrument for our exclusive use.”
“Perhaps you are right,” said Julia. “I must think that over. But a piano we must have. If we are going to have an At Home day we must be able to have music, even though we can’t make it ourselves.”
“But why not have our At Home day in mother’s drawing-room?”