“That sounds very nice,” thought Sibyl to herself. “Mother is just in her most beautiful humor. Of course I’ll listen.”
“I wish,” continued the mother, and she turned slightly away from the child as she spoke, “I wish you to stop all that nonsense about your father and me. I wish you to understand that we are not perfect, either of us; we are just everyday, ordinary sort of people. As we happen to be your father and mother, you must obey us and do what we wish; but you make yourself, and us also, ridiculous when you talk as you do. I am perfectly sick of your poses, Sibyl.”
“Poses!” cried Sibyl; “what’s poses?”
“Oh, you are too tiresome; ask nurse to explain, or Miss Winstead, when you go home. Miss Winstead, if she is wise, will tell you that you must just turn round and go the other way. You must obey me, of course, and understand that I know the right way to train you; but you are not to talk of me as though I were an angel. I am nothing of the kind. I am an ordinary woman, with ordinary feelings and ordinary faults, and I wish you to be an ordinary little girl. I am very angry with you for your great rudeness to Lord Grayleigh. What did it mean?”
“Oh, mother! it meant——” Sibyl swallowed something in her throat. Her mother’s speech was unintelligible; it hurt her, she did not exactly know why, but this last remark was an opening.
“Mother, I am glad you spoke of it. I could not, really and truly, help it.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. Now go away. Hortense is coming to dress me for dinner. Go.”
“But, mother! one minute first, please—please.”
“Go, Sibyl, obey me.”
“It was ’cos Lord Grayleigh spoke against my——”