‘Florry, don’t tell stories of Uncle James; I am very fond of him, and I won’t have it.’
‘It’s true all the same. I don’t say it’s his fault, it’s Jim’s fault. Papa swears—he does, he can’t help it, at Jim, and then pretends it’s something else—the gardener, or the overseer, or the poor people, or even poor Dash—that makes him so angry. Isn’t that lying? Then mamma pretends Jim has doubts and won’t go in for the Church because of them, when she knows very well what it is really he has been sent down for. And Jim pretends that he is going back to Cambridge next term, and that he is quite friendly with all the dons, and came down to read—I’ve heard him say that.’
‘It may not be true,’ said Mab, doubtfully, ‘but I shouldn’t call that lying—why should we all go and tell that poor Jim has not been good? What have the other people to do with it? Mother says we’re not called upon to give them any information—and she just says the same as you do: but that is not to lie.’
‘We are all pretending, every one,’ said Florry. ‘Emmy and I are by way of knowing nothing at all. I believe Jim thinks we don’t know anything. So we have to pretend not only to other people, but to him in our very own house, and papa too. I have heard papa say, “Thank Heaven, the girls at least know nothing,” and mamma, the dreadful, dreadful liar that she is, thanks Heaven too, though she knows very well that we knew as soon as she did, and that she couldn’t keep anything from us two. If you think of that, Mab, and just imagine how we go on pretending to each other, and to everybody.
‘Now, if Jim were to go off to a ranche, as people advise, we should all be very wretched, and probably it would be his ruin, but it would be a little relief all the same. Or if Emmy were to get hold of this man—oh, it may be odious, and you may cry out, but it would be a great relief. There would be her wedding to think about, and her things, and altogether it would be a change for everybody; and then she could do something for Jim.’
‘Her husband could, you mean?’
‘It is the same thing: he would, for his own sake, not to have an idle brother always about. It is killing all of us. One could bear it, perhaps; but four all bearing it—all pretending something different, as I tell you; Emmy and I not to know; mamma and papa that it’s another thing altogether that vexes them. Oh! we get exasperated sometimes to that degree, we could tear each other to pieces just to make a change.’
‘You are so exaggerated, Florry; mother always says so. You make a mountain out of a molehill.’
‘I just wish Aunt Emily had our molehill for a little while—just for a little while—to see how she liked it. What a lucky woman she is to have only a girl! Nothing very bad can ever happen to you, Mab, or come to her through you. You may be dull, perhaps, just two women, one opposite to the other——’
‘Dull! mother and I? Never. We don’t know what it is to be dull!’