“And,” I continued, “you’d better not let Terence and Gerald hear you talk of holidays. They don’t own to anything but vacations now.”
“That’s just because they’re not really grown-up,” said Moore shrewdly; “at least not out in the world. Look at Jocelyn now—he might give himself airs. But he always talks of his holidays when he comes home. He very seldom even calls it ‘leave,’ though he is—how old is he now, Rex? Twenty-five? Yes—eleven years older than I.”
“We’re all getting very old,” I said. “I shall be eighteen next spring. Can you believe it? And there’s only Horace between you and me. We shall all be grown-up before we know where we are, Moore.” And I sighed as I said it. I did not want to be grown-up or to come out. Life suited me very well indeed just as it was, especially since we had left off going abroad every winter, and part of the summer too, sometimes, for mother’s health. She had been so much stronger of late years, that we had been able to settle down in our own home, which I loved better than any place in the world, both for its own sake and because here I could enjoy to the full the society of my five brothers whenever “holidays” or vacations or leaves allowed them to be with us. So perhaps it is not to be wondered at that my father’s breakfast-table fiat was something of a disappointment to me, though to many girls of my age it would have been received with delight. For it was the announcement of his decision that we were to set out on our travels again, to spend the next few months at least, out of England, at some German baths in the first place, and later on at one of the usual winter resorts for invalids.
Mother had flagged of late, or at least father thought so, and Moore, on the eve of public school life and always delicate, had not mended matters by catching whooping-cough at his preparatory school and having it badly. It would never do for him to start on his new career “below par,” said my father; better delay it for a few months than have him break down and be sent home again with everything interrupted; in which argument no doubt there was great common-sense.
“Yes,” I went on, “we shall all be grown-up in no time, and then dreadful things will happen. You and Horry will go off goodness knows where, and I shall be left alone. You are my last rose of summer, Moore. Not that I ever cared as much for Terence and Gerald as for you and Horace as companions. Terry has always been a bit of a prig, and Gerald too mad about soldiering, even though he doesn’t find it easy to pass his examinations. Horace and you are my special brothers, aren’t you, Othello?”
Moore squeezed my arm in token of affection. He was like a girl in many of his ways as well as in his looks—demonstrative and caressing, yet brave as a lion and essentially manly.
“You’ll have me for ages yet,” he said consolingly, “at least for holidays; and perhaps the dreadful things won’t all be on the side of us boys. You’ll be going and getting married, Reggie, once you’re grown-up. Oh, how I shall hate your husband!”
I could not help laughing at his vehemence.
“Wait till he exists to be hated,” I said. “You really needn’t trouble about him. Perhaps there will never be such a person. Anyway, girls don’t often marry as young as I am, so you can count upon me quite as securely as I can count upon you.”
How lightly we spoke!