“Don’t talk of it all the same,” said Evelyn. “I do not know, honestly I don’t, how I should have got on here without you, but yet I cannot endure to think of it. I don’t think I could have stood it, even when every one was so nice and I was really enjoying myself, if I had not resolutely determined to put you out of my mind for the time.”
“You are very fortunate in possessing any power of the kind,” said Philippa, with some amusement at her sister’s emphasising of her own strength of will.
“Yes,” said Evelyn, “it is an excellent thing to possess.”
“It is the thought of being at home again and rid of all this acting and planning and watching, that I am so happy about,” Philippa went on. “I do really and truly feel as if I never shall want to leave mamma again. I don’t mind if she—”
It was perhaps as well that Evelyn here interrupted her.
“Nonsense, dear,” she said. “You will get quite different again. You mustn’t give way to such morbid feelings, for my sake even, you must not, or else I should always have a wretched self-reproach that somehow I had spoilt your girlhood—though of course it was not my doing. But I suppose I might have been resolute and insisted on your returning, or even taken you back myself and telegraphed to them here that I was delayed.”
“I would not have gone back,” said Philippa, stoutly.
“Well, then, if it wasn’t my fault, don’t punish me for it by saying dreadful things. You shall come to Merle-in-the-Wold whenever we get Mr Gresham’s invitation, and enjoy yourself with Duke and me.”
