“But you see what Mrs Greville says about preferring you,” suggested Mrs Western, gently, with some faint, instinctive notion of what was passing in her second daughter’s heart.
“Yes, but that’s rubbish,” said Lilias, the colour rising slightly in her cheeks. “Mr Greville likes us both. It is only that I chatter more than Mary, and, like all quiet, indolent men, he likes to be amused with the least possible trouble to himself. Mary is not so amusing, perhaps, because there is generally a large sprinkling of sense in her remarks, and even when, on rare occasions, she mixes it up with nonsense it is more fatiguing to separate the two than to take it all in comfortably, as pure, unadulterated nonsense like mine.”
“You are certainly giving us a specimen of it just now,” said Mary, parenthetically. “But seriously, mamma,” she went on, “I think we should consider what Mrs Greville says about preferring Lilias. I am speaking partly selfishly, for though I should have liked it well enough at another time, just now I should not like it at all. It would unsettle me altogether—I have just got all the things I want to do before the summer nicely arranged. Don’t be vexed with me or think me very selfish, Lilias,” for her sister was regarding her with an expression she did not quite understand.
To her surprise, Lilias, by way of answer, threw her arms around her and hugged her violently.
“Think you selfish! Mother just listen to her,” she exclaimed. “Fancy me thinking Mary selfish.” Then she hugged her again, and Mary felt there were tears in her eyes. “Selfish indeed! No, but I wouldn’t say as much for your truthfulness, you little humbug! Do you think I don’t see through all your unselfish story-telling,” she added in a lower voice.
“Then don’t disappoint me,” whispered Mary, and when at last she disengaged herself from Lilias’s embrace, she said aloud, quietly indeed, but firmly enough to carry her purpose, “it is not story-telling, it is true. I should not, in the very least degree, enjoy leaving home just now. And, what is more, I just won’t go, so, dear friends, you see my mind’s made up.”
And so it was settled, to be followed as was inevitable with these girls when any scheme of the kind was in prospect, by a solemn and momentous discussion as to ways and means—in other words, as to dresses and bonnets and ribbons! But Lilias brightened up wonderfully under the impetus of this discussion, and seemed, for the time, so like her old self that Mary began to take heart about her, and to hope everything from the change in prospect.