“I can’t understand why you couldn’t be content to go to some nice south-country place, instead of travelling to the other end of the country in this dusty weather,” Agnes opined, as she assiduously fixed the label to every separate piece of the luggage which was piled together in the hall. “It’s so foolish to waste time and money when there are nice places at hand. Now, there’s Cromer—”
“You don’t get heather-clad mountains at Cromer, Agnes, and we shan’t have promenades at Glenaire, nor bands, nor crowds of fashionable people quizzing each other all day long. We prefer the real, true, genuine country.”
“Oh, well, you’ll be tired of it soon enough! Margot will hate it. We shall have you hurrying back at the end of a fortnight, bored to death. I don’t think that lock of yours is quite safe, Margot. I shouldn’t wonder if you found some things missing when you arrive. The guards have a splendid chance on these all-night journeys,” prophesied Agnes cheerfully. She stared in surprise when Margot burst into a peal of laughter, and repeated, “Poor old Agnes!” as if she, secure and comfortable at home, were the one to be pitied, instead of the careless travellers into the unknown!
The sisters kissed each other in perfunctory manner, Ron shook hands, and nodded vaguely in response to half a dozen injunctions and reminders; then the travellers took their places in the cab, bending forward to wave their adieux, looking extraordinarily alike the while—young and eager and handsome, with the light of the summer sun reflected in their happy eyes.
Agnes felt a little chill as she shut the door and walked back into the quiet house. All the morning she had looked forward to the hours of peace and quietness which would follow the departure of the two children of the household; but now that the time had arrived she was conscious of an unwonted feeling of depression. The sound of that last pitying, “Poor old Agnes!” rang in her ears. Why “poor”? Why should Margot speak of her as some one to be pitied? As her father’s eldest unmarried daughter and the mistress of the house, she was surely a person to be approved and envied. And yet, recalling those two vivid, radiant faces, Agnes dimly felt that there was something in life which Margot and Ron had found, and she herself had missed.
“I don’t understand!” she repeated to herself with wrinkled brows. A vague depression hung over her spirits; she thought uneasily of her years, and wondered if she were growing old, unconscious of the fact that she had never yet succeeded in being young.