“Never would! how can you tell that, brother?”
“Why, now look at her, with her books, and her drawings, and all this apparatus. Do you think she would ever jump up, with all her nicety, too, and put by all these things, to go down into the greasy kitchen, and plump up to the elbows in suet, like a cook, for a plum-pudding?”
“I need not plump up to the elbows, brother,” said Sophy, smiling: “nor is it necessary that I should be a cook: but, if it were necessary, I hope I should be able to make a pudding.”
“Yes, yes,” cried Marianne, warmly; “and she would jump up, and put by all her things in a minute if it were necessary, and run down stairs and up again like lightning, or do anything that was ever so disagreeable to her, even about the suet, with all her nicety, brother, I assure you, as she used to do anything, everything for me, when I was ill last winter. Oh, brother, she can do anything; and she could make the best plum-pudding in the whole world, I’m sure, in a minute, if it were necessary.”
CHAPTER II.
A knock at the door, from Mrs. Theresa Tattle’s servant, recalled Marianne to the business of the day.
“There,” said Frederick, “we have sent no answer all this time. It’s necessary to think of that in a minute.”
The servant came with his mistress’ compliments, to let the young ladies and Mr. Frederick know that she was waiting tea for them.
“Waiting! then we must go,” said Frederick.
The servant opened the door wider, to let him pass, and Marianne thought she must follow her brother: so they went downstairs together, while Sophy gave her own message to the servant, and quietly stayed at her usual occupations.