And she thought it very kind of Dot to have asked her mother to break the rule of silence, if it were only for an hour.
"I thought you were going to wear your hair on the top of your head," she said, surveying Dot's plait somewhat contemptuously.
"Mother won't let me," said Dot; "she says sixteen's too young."
"Why sixteen is old," said Betty, "and you've left school."
"I know. And mother was married at sixteen. But she says she wants me to keep my girlhood a little longer than she kept hers."
"Hem," said Betty.
"I don't want to," said Dot, and added virtuously, "but we can't do just as we like even with our own hair."
"I shall," said Betty, and gave her morsel of a plait a convincing pull. "Wasn't my hair as long as yours once; and didn't I cut it off because I wanted to?"
Then Dot bethought her of the wisdom of sixteen, and the foolishness of twelve and a bit, and she slipped her arm as lovingly around her little sister as she was wont to do around any of her friends at Westmead House.
"Dear little Betty," she said, "promise me, you poor little thing, to be good all the time I am away."