“What were you going to say, Mary?” asked Lilias, whose eyes had idly journeyed down from the sky to her sister’s face. “Why did you stop?”
“On second thoughts I thought it not worth saying,” replied Mary, “but I’ll tell you if you like. It was only what you said about the leaves—it made me think that was what mother feels. She knows how fast they fall once they begin, and it makes her afraid for us in a way. She doesn’t want to hurry us out into the storms; we have always been so well sheltered.”
Lilias looked at her sister for a minute without speaking. “How prettily you see things,” she said, admiringly. “You think of things that would never come into my head, yet people fancy you are the practical and prosaic one of us all. I believe it is all because you are called Mary.”
“But Mary was just not the practical and prosaic one. You mean Martha.”
“No; no, I don’t. Marys nowadays are practical and prosaic, any way. I don’t mean to say that you are, except sometimes, perhaps. I think you must be very like what mamma was at your age, but I fancy you are cleverer and—”
“And what?”
“And wiser—at least, in some ways. You would not be satisfied to marry just such a person as my father must have been; you would want some one more energetic and stronger altogether.”
“Perhaps,” said Mary. “But I do not think we need speculate about that sort of thing for me, Lilias; there’s plenty of time to think what sort of a person I would marry, if ever I do, which very likely I won’t.”
“Don’t speak like Mrs Gamp, and please don’t be so sensible, Mary. If you only would be silly sometimes, you would be perfect—quite perfect,” said Lilias.
Mary smiled.