"Somehow I don't think I can fancy Iris wearing earrings," she said; and Bruce, who had a respect for his sister's opinion which she herself did not suspect, looked rueful.
"But, Chloe, why not? You always wear them?"
"Certainly I do." As a matter of fact she did, and the pearls or sapphires which she affected were as much a part of her personality as her black hair or her narrow blue eyes. "But then Iris is a different sort of person. She is younger, more natural, more unsophisticated; and I'm not quite sure whether these pretty things will suit her charming face."
"Oh!" Bruce's own face fell, and for once Chloe felt an impulse of compassion with another's disappointment.
"At any rate they are very dainty and girlish," she said, handing back the case. "I congratulate you on your taste, Bruce. You might very easily have got more elaborate ones—like some of mine—which would have been very inappropriate to a girl."
"Why do you always speak of yourself as though you were a middle-aged woman, Chloe?" asked her brother with a sudden curiosity. "You seem to forget you are younger than I—why, you are only twenty-six now."
"Am I?" Her smile was baffling. "In actual years I believe I am. But in thought, in feeling, in everything, I am a hundred years older than you, Bruce."
Cherry's return to her uncle's side with a request to him to take out "the dangly thing what tickles my ear" cut short Bruce's reply, and breakfast proceeded tranquilly, while the sun shone gaily and the roses for which Cherry Orchard was famous scented the soft, warm air which floated in through the widely-opened windows.
Meanwhile Anstice was in a quandary on this beautiful summer morning.