“You’d better be careful what you say. You are not talking to a thief, remember!”
“How am I to know that?” cried Madge wildly. “If a man begins to bet, one can never tell to what he may sink next. And how could a boy like you have such a sum to spare? Where did you get it, Barney? Wherever you got it, it must be paid back at once.”
There was no reply. Barney folded his arms, and set his lips in sullen determination. The question was repeated, to be ignored once more, when the tide of the girl’s indignation could no longer be restrained.
“Coward! Despicable! To see your sisters slaving for a pittance, and to be content to be a shame and a burden! If you cannot work, at least you might try to be a man, and not disgrace our name.”
Bitter words—bitter words I what need to repeat them? The girl had worked herself into a frenzy of anger, and hardly realised what she was saying, and the boy eat still and listened—the boy of seventeen, who all his life had been the spoiled darling of the household. Ten minutes before the stress of accumulated troubles was upon him, and he had been wrestling with an agony of repentance. A kiss from Philippa, a soft word from Hope, would have brought him to his knees in a flood of penitent tears; but the lash of Madge’s words hardened his heart within him. He made no attempt to stop the torrent of reproach, but when at last she came to a pause he rose slowly, and standing at his full height, looked down upon her.
“If you have quite finished, will you kindly leave my room?” He pointed to the door as he spoke, and there was a look on his face which Madge had never seen before. Barney the boy was dead: Barney the man confronted her with haggard face, and spoke in a tone of authority which she dared not disobey. She turned towards the door, murmuring disjointed words of warning:
“If you will not tell, I must. Philippa—she will have to know.”
“There is no necessity to disturb Philippa to-night. In the morning, no doubt, she will hear that—and other things!”
There was an ominous sound in those last three words which chilled Madge with a sense of trouble to come, but the door was closed against her even as they were spoken, and she crept back to bed shivering and dismayed. Perhaps if she had been gentler, more conciliating—if she had fought with the weapons of love instead of anger—she would not have been so signally defeated. Like many another quick-tempered sister, Madge’s anger ended in self-reproach, and when too late she would have given the world to withdraw her bitter, pitiless words.