'It is not in our hands—not in mine, any way,' said Jacinth quietly. 'All you have told me makes no difference to me. I am not going to meddle, and I shall not mention the Harpers at all, if I can help it.'
'Not even in the way mamma says we might?' said Frances.
'No—not at all, if I can help it. I do not want to spoil the happiness of being with Lady Myrtle by bringing up disagreeable subjects. I shall tell mamma so when I write.'
Frances was silent. After all, she reflected, perhaps it did not much matter. Jacinth did not know Bessie and Margaret as she did, and now that her sister understood the whole—the near relationship and the whole story, perhaps it would be very difficult for her to come upon the subject naturally.
'Honor Falmouth says,' remarked Jacinth in a moment or two, 'that she has heard that perhaps the girls are not coming back to school after the Christmas holidays.'
'Oh,' exclaimed Frances, looking greatly troubled, 'oh, Jass, I do hope it's not true.'
'I should not be very sorry,' said Jacinth, 'except,' she added with some effort, 'except for your sake. And of course I have never said that they were not very nice girls. I know they are, only—it has been so tiresome and unlucky. I just wish we had never known them.'
'I wish sometimes we had never known Lady Myrtle,' said Frances. 'You and I have never been—like this—with each other before, Jass.'
'Well, we needn't quarrel about it,' said her sister. 'Let's try to keep off the subject of the Harper family. For I can do them no good.'
'Very well,' said Frances, though rather sadly. 'I wonder,' she went on thinking to herself—'I wonder why Bessie and Margaret are perhaps to leave school; they are getting on so well.'