'I don't understand you, Frances,' she said. 'Do you want to take away my pleasure in my watch? I've never had one before, you know, and lots of girls have watches, quite young. Of course I know the value of it would do lots of things—make some poor family quite rich for a year. But when you get a new frock of some good stuff and nicely made, I don't say to you that you might have had it of common print, run up anyhow, and spent the rest on poor people. You don't see things fairly, Frances.'
Frances recognised the sense of Jacinth's argument, but she could not explain herself.
'I didn't mean that exactly,' she said. 'I know there have to be degrees of things—rich and poor, and I suppose it's not wrong to be rich, if—if one doesn't get selfish. That isn't what I meant. I'm very pleased you've got the watch, Jass, and I wish I hadn't said that.'
'I wish you hadn't too,' said her sister. 'It has taken away a good deal of my pleasure; and somehow, Frances, very often now, I don't understand you. I know you are never the least jealous, you haven't it in you, but yet you don't seem to like to see me happy. I could almost think you are what Aunt Alison would call "morbid."'
'I don't think I know what that means,' said Frances, sadly, though she had a sort of idea what Jacinth wished to express.
'Sometimes,' continued Jacinth, 'I have a feeling that other girls have come between you and me. If it could be—if I really thought it was the Harpers, though they do seem nice, I would almost hate them. One way and another, they do seem to have been the cause of a lot of worry.'
'Oh Jass, it isn't their fault—truly it isn't,' pleaded Frances, almost in tears. 'I haven't been very happy lately, but indeed it isn't that I'm changed to you. Perhaps after a while you'll understand me better. If only mamma was at home'——
'It's no good wishing for that,' replied Jacinth. 'And you are so queer, I really don't know if you'd be pleased if things did happen to make mamma come home. I was going to tell you some things,' she added mysteriously, 'but I think I'd better not.'
And, to her surprise, her hints, instead of whetting her sister's curiosity, seemed rather to alarm her.
'No,' she agreed, 'if it's anything about Lady——or, or plans, I'd rather not know. I hate any sort of secret.'