‘Your future, perhaps, it would be better to say.’
‘My future! is that to be detached and put separate from other people’s like an odd piece in a puzzle? I don’t know still what you mean, mother!’
‘And yet it is plain enough,’ said Lady William, with a sigh. ‘The other girls here are all in their natural sphere. But you, Mab, are a bird of another species in a sparrow’s nest.’
‘I hope you don’t compare me to a cuckoo, mother.’
‘Something very different, my dear; the others are plain brown homely birds. Emmy and Florry will twitter under the eaves in some parsonage or other, probably all their lives; but you are a Pakenham.’
‘What’s a Pakenham?’ said Mab; ‘you speak as if it were a Plantagenet.’
‘Well, not so grand, perhaps—but still it is different. And I have brought you up only like what I was myself: a little country girl.’
‘Only like what you were yourself! You know very well, mother, and it’s unkind to remind me of it, that if I were to live a hundred years I should never get to be like you. It’s Emmy that’s like you. I’m not envious; but to think that your daughter should be a little—just a—Pakenham, as you say; and Emmy like you!’
‘She is not very like me—if I’m any judge myself,’ Lady William said.
‘She is not half nor a quarter so pretty as you are, mammy dear.’