“Bless you, Emily! I’m a coward, I know, but I should be grateful. I can’t answer for what I should do if Darsie cried, and begged my protection. Women have twice the pluck of men in these affairs!”
Nevertheless it was with a quaking heart that Mrs Garnett broached the object of Aunt Maria’s proposition over the schoolroom tea that afternoon, and her nervousness was not decreased by the smilingly unperturbed manner in which it was received. Never, never for a moment did it appear possible to the three girls that such a proposition could be seriously discussed.
“So likely!” sneered Clemence with a fine disdain. “Give up all the fun and excitement of the sea with the Vernons, to browse with Aunt Maria. So likely, to be sure!”
“Poor dear old love! She is deluded. Thinks it would be a pleasure and benefit, does she. I wouldn’t take a thousand pounds—”
Thus Lavender. Darsie went a step farther in tragic declamation.
“I’d drown myself first! To sit there—panting, in hot rooms, on Benger’s food, and know that all the others were bathing and running wild on the shore—I’d burst! I’d run away in an hour—”
“Dears, it’s a beautiful old place. There are gardens, and lawns, and horses, and dogs. Cows, too! I am sure there are cows—she used to keep a herd of Jerseys. You could see them being milked.”
“Welsh cows are good enough for me. I don’t need Jerseys. Or lawns! Give me the free, untrammelled countryside!
“‘And to see it reflected in eyes that I love.’”
Darsie paraphrased a line of the sweet old ballad, singing it in a clear, bell-like voice to a pantomime of clasped hands and rolling eyes. “It would be bad enough in an ordinary year, but to rend us apart from the Vernons—oh, no, it’s unthinkable!”