‘She was nice enough to us,’ said Mrs. Plowden, ‘but very hoighty-toighty with your aunt. Did you observe that, Emmy? Poor Aunt Emily was very kind. She said in such a pretty way, “That is Emily Plowden now,” and really Emmy looked so very like her at that moment—with the charm of youth, of course, added on—that nobody could help remarking it. Mr. Swinford looked from one to the other, making a little comparison I could see—and you may imagine in whose favour it was.’
‘It was in my sister’s favour, of course,’ said the Rector. There was something in the way in which he emphasised the my, as if to mark the difference between his daughter, who was her mother’s as well as his, and his sister who was all his own, that might have been amusing to a bystander, but to Mrs. Plowden was not amusing at all.
‘It is most curious,’ she said, ‘the way you always stand up for your own family——’
‘Whom do you mean by my own family? Emmy is my own family, I suppose?’
‘You know very well what I mean. I mean your side of the house in opposition to mine. One would think that nobody born was ever equal to your people—not even your own children.’
‘My own children are as God has made them,’ said the Rector. He added, as if she had been somehow of a superior manufacture, ‘But my sister Emily was the sweetest creature I ever saw when she was Emmy’s age. Emmy is a good girl, and she is very nice-looking or she could not be supposed to be like my sister. But as for comparing the one to the other, my dear, it only shows how little you know.’
‘Upon my word!’ cried Mrs. Plowden, not without reason, ‘I hope my Emmy may be compared to any one. Your sister had always a great deal too much intellectual pride about her to please me. She was not content to be nice-looking, which nobody ever denied, but she went in for being clever, too. I know you don’t approve of women taking that sort of position, James. Indeed, you have said as much a hundred times—and now to go on raving about your sister, as if we haven’t all had sisters that were out of the common in our day!’
‘My dear, I didn’t know there was anybody out of the common connected with you. My impression is I never heard you brag of that before—no more than poor Emily ever did about being more clever than the rest of us. Poor girl, it hasn’t come to much in her case.’
‘I am not one to be always blowing a trumpet about my family,’ said Mrs. Plowden angrily; ‘but if you think my brother Thurston is nobody——’
‘Not in the least; he is a very nice fellow, and a Q.C.’