“Nothing of the sort—what could I say? I couldn’t tell her, Nancy don’t want to be seen.”
“Don’t call me Nancy, please!”
“Well, Anna then—but I never can recollect. I said I didn’t know if you would like it—but anyhow you could go upstairs if you didn’t like it.”
“She must think me a pretty bear. She did not ask you—what your sister’s name was, nor where she came from, nor—anything about her?”
“Not a word. Why should she? You didn’t show at all; when you are seen you are a deal more interesting than me, I don’t deny it.”
“Please!” said Nancy clasping her hands, “don’t say ‘a deal,’ and ‘more interesting than me.’”
“What should I say,” said the good-humoured Matilda; “it is a good thing I am not nervous. When she comes, you can run upstairs. You can listen over the banisters, and hear all she is saying; and if you like her talk, you can come down next time. After all, Nancy, if you had not imagined that we would see them, why should we have come here?”
“But she will know me,” said Nancy, “she saw me once—”
“On your wedding day! You don’t think you are a bit like the same person in that funny stiff little cap, and white collar, as you were in your wedding dress with your veil? I don’t think Arthur himself would know you,” said her sister frankly. Nancy winced at this, in spite of herself. She did not want to be so changed as this. That she might be changed a little, that there might be a difficulty in recognising her, and a sense of mystery exciting their curiosity before they found her out—that would be nothing but pleasant; but to be so unlike herself as not to be recognised, even by Arthur, was not in her thoughts.
It was Matilda’s part to put the tea away, as it had been hers to make it. There was no question between them of their different positions. Matilda yielded to Nancy all that the other could require. It was not hers, heaven forbid it, to read these big books, to think so much about everything, to take such trouble to learn drawing, and to understand the arrangements of a room. But she liked getting the tea, and putting the things away, though she was apt to make Nancy angry by setting the chairs straight against the wall. And then they sat at the table with the lamp between them, Matilda with her needlework, Nancy reading her French for practice. Perhaps in her heart the elder sister might be sighing for the friendliness of Underhayes, where she could steal out in the evening and go through the blazing gas in Raisins’ shop, into the comfortable little parlour, to have a chat with Sarah Jane; but on the whole they were not at all unhappy; all the energies of Nancy’s active mind were fixed upon her French. She could now, she thought, understand very well all that was said to her, if ever she went to France again; and understand the plays, and know what everything was about. Thus she revolved in her narrow circle, preparing for those contingencies which had once happened, and still hopeful that they were the same which would happen again.