Somehow Sharley always seemed the most my friend, though she was a good deal older. Perhaps it was through having known her the first, and partly, I daresay, because in some ways I was old for my age.
The big brother Gerard came home for his holidays three times a year. He was a very nice boy, I am sure, but I did not get to know him well, and I had rather a grudge at him. For when he was at Moor Court I seemed to see so much less of Sharley. It wasn't her fault. She was not a changeable girl at all, but Jerry had always been accustomed to having her a great deal with him in his holidays, as she took pains to explain to me. So of course if she had given him up for me she would have been changeable.
She did her best, I will say that for her. She told Gerard all about me, and he was very nice to me. But it was in rather a big boy way, which I did not understand. I thought he was treating me like a baby when he only meant to be kind and brotherly. I remember one day being so offended at his lifting me over a stile, that it was all I could do not to burst into tears!
So it came to be the way among us, without anything being actually said about it, that during Jerry's holidays I was mostly with the four others—Nan and Vallie and the two younger boys.
And I daresay it was a good thing for me. For none of them were at all old for their age; they were just hearty, healthy, regular children, living in the present and very happy in it. And if I had been altogether with the older ones I might have grown more and more 'old-fashioned.' For Gerard was a very serious and thoughtful boy, and Sharley, though in outside ways she seemed rather wild and hoydenish, was really very clever and very wise, to be only the age she was. I never quite took in that side of her character till I saw her with Jerry—she seemed quite transformed.
One thing came to pass, however, which was a great pleasure to the two people it chiefly concerned and to Sharley. As for me, I don't think I gave much attention to it, and I am not sure that if it had at all interfered with my own life I should not have been rather jealous!
This was a close friendship between Gerard Nestor and grandmamma.
And it is necessary to speak about it because it was the beginning of things which brought about great changes.
Grandmamma loved boys and she was one of those women that are well fitted to manage them. She used to say that till she got me, she had never had anything to do with girls. For her own children were both boys—papa was the elder, and the other was a dear boy who died when he was only sixteen, and whom of course I had never seen, though grandmamma liked me to speak of him as 'Uncle Guy.' Then, too, she had had some charge of her nephew, Mr. Cosmo Vandeleur.
Her friendship with Jerry came about by his reading French and German with her in the holidays. He had never been out of England and he was anxious to improve his 'foreign languages,' as he was backward in them, besides having a very bad accent indeed.