“How you must dislike Laurence!” said Alys. “Has he displeased you since you have been here?”
“Oh dear, no,” said Mary, eagerly. “He has been as kind and considerate as possible. I wish I could help hurting you, Alys. I can say one thing, I do like Mr Cheviott as your brother, more than I could have believed it possible I could ever like him.”
“Faint praise,” said Alys.
“But not of the ‘damning’ kind. I mean what I say,” persisted Mary. “And—perhaps you will think this worse than ‘faint praise’—since I have seen him in this way—as your brother—I cannot help thinking that circumstances, the way he has been brought up, have a good deal to answer for in his case.”
Alys’s face flushed a little, yet she was not offended.
“And why not in mine?” she said. “I have had more reason to be spoiled than poor Laurence. His youth was anything but a very smooth or happy one. My father was not rich always, you know.”
“Was he not? Still ‘rich’ is a comparative word. Mr Cheviott has always ‘moved in a certain sphere,’ as newspapers say, and he cannot have had much chance of seeing outside that sphere,” said Mary, with the calm philosophy of her twenty years’ thorough knowledge of the world in all its phases. “As for you, Alys, you are not spoiled, just because you are not. You are a duck—at least you have a duck’s back—it has run off you.”
And both girls were laughing at this when Mr Cheviott, just returned from his daily expedition to Romary, entered the room.
“You are very merry,” he said, questioningly. “By-the-bye, Miss Western,” he went on, with some constraint but, nevertheless, resolution in his voice, “I hope you have good news of your sister?”
“Excellent, thank you,” replied Mary, looking up bravely into his face. “She is as happy and well as possible.”