“It is distinguished,” said Madeleine, “by being the cleanest cottage in the place, you will be glad to hear. Indeed,” catching sight of a slightly apprehensive look on Betty’s face, “it is more than that, it is really clean.”
“Thank goodness,” Betty murmured to herself, at which Horace, who was beside her, could not repress a smile.
“You don’t share your sister’s enthusiasm for—no, I won’t say ‘slumming,’ it is such a hateful word, and has been so abused,” he said.
“Slumming?” repeated Betty, “I don’t quite know what you mean.” And she looked up in his face naïvely.
The questioning in her eyes made her look even more childlike than usual. For a moment Horace seemed to have forgotten what they had been saying; then he pulled himself together, as it were.
“I am very glad you don’t,” he said, “and of course anything your sister does would be on quite different lines from that kind of sensational philanthropy. I only meant that you have a natural shrinking from—well, dirty cottages and people, and that sort of thing! I am sure I sympathise with you in it. Any one so sensitive—”
But, rather to his surprise, Betty’s expression had grown somewhat shamefaced.
“Oh,” she said quickly, “it’s just selfishness, I’m afraid. I often think I am rather the spoilt one at home; Frances and Eira are so good, and never think about themselves. I dare say disagreeable things are quite as disagreeable to them as to me. But they always save me from them in every way. I believe it began by my not being as strong as they when I was quite a little girl. And even mamma petted me much more than the others.”
“I don’t wonder at it,” said Horace; “there are some people made to be petted, and the world would be a worse place than it is without them.”
“But,” said Betty, again scarcely seeming to notice his words, and with a funny little air of dignity, “I am really not so babyish as you might think! With such an elder sister as Frances, how could I be? I do help a little, even in what they do here. I write out a good deal. We have made large sheets of directions in printed letters of what to do in accidents and so on, copied from our books, of course, and the others say I can print better than they can. So that is something,” with a touch of satisfaction.