“Don’t you see, Dor, that she thinks us very silly, and would not talk such nonsense as we are talking for the world? There is no sense in it, and Effie is full of sense.”
“Miss Ogilvie has both sense and sympathy,” said Fred.
This discussion over her alarmed Effie. She grew red and pale; half affronted, half pleased, wholly shy and uncomfortable.
“No,” she said, “I couldn’t talk like you. I never talk except when—except when—I have got something to say; that is, of course, I mean something that is—something—not merely out of my head, like you. I am not clever enough for that.”
“Is she making fun of us, Phyll?”
“I think so, Dor. She is fact, and we are—well, what are we?—not fiction altogether, because we’re real enough in flesh and blood.”
Effie was moved to defend herself.
“You are like two young ladies in a book,” she said, “and I am just a girl like anybody else. I say How-do-you-do? and Do you think it will be a fine day? or I can tell you if anything has happened in the village, and that Dr. Jardine was called away this morning to Fairyknowe, so that somebody there must be ill. But you make up what is very nice to listen to, and yet it makes one laugh, because it is about nothing at all.”
“That is quite true,” said Doris; “that is our way. We don’t go in for fact. We belong to the speculative side. We have nothing real to do, so we have to imagine things to talk about.”
“And I hope you think we do it well,” said Phyllis with a laugh.