“Yes,” said Betty, “why should we take for granted that, if new people come to Craig-Morion, they shouldn’t be nice and pleasant?”
“Nice and pleasant they might be,” replied her father, “in their own world of wealth and luxury and among themselves. But in such a case your common-sense might tell you that it is most unlikely that they would give a thought to your existence, or even know of it, living in poverty as we do. And one thing I shall never allow,” he went on, working himself up into assuredly very premature irritation, “I give you fair warning, and that is I will allow no sort of patronising.”
Not only his three daughters but even poor Lady Emma looked aghast at this unexpected fulmination.
“It is too bad,” thought the younger girls to themselves, “that we should be scolded beforehand for a state of things which will probably never come to pass.”
“And it is no good,” said Betty afterwards, when she found herself alone with Eira, “no good trying to get up the tiniest little bit of excitement or variety in our lives. Papa is too bad! I’m going to give up trying for anything, except a sort of stupid lethargic contentment. Perhaps that’s what people mean by the discipline of life.”
“I can’t quite think that,” Eira replied. “Look at Francie, now. You can’t say she’s in a state of lethargic resignation. She looks out for any little pleasure as eagerly as for the first primroses in the spring.” For Eira was on the whole less impressionable than Betty, or perhaps constitutionally stronger, and therefore more able to repel the insidious attacks of not-to-be-wondered-at depression, before which Betty felt frequently all but powerless.
But this conversation took place later in the afternoon. At the luncheon table her father’s bitter and hurting words incited Frances as usual to exert her calming influence.
“It would be such a terrible pity,” she thought to herself, “for papa to begin nursing up prejudices against these possible neighbours.”
“I scarcely think,” she said aloud, gently, “that any people coming to Craig-Morion could altogether ignore us, or rather,” with a bright inspiration, “that it would be possible for us altogether to ignore them. Our very name would forbid it; and surely, papa, you, who know far more of the world than any of us, would hesitate to say that even in this material age money is everything.”
Mr Morion fell unsuspectingly into the innocent little trap laid for him by his eldest daughter.