He strolled along the walk with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders up to his ears.
“I do not think it is possible,” he added, turning to her with a softened tone, “that I could make you understand; for it is so different from anything you have ever known.”
“I hope I am not so dreadfully stupid!” said Bee, incensed. “If Laura understands, why should it be so impossible for me?”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake talk of things you can know something about; as if there was any comparison between her and you.”
“I think you are very uncivil,” said Bee, ready to weep. “I may not be clever, but yet I am your sister, and it is only because I wanted to help you that I took the trouble to speak at all.”
“You are very well meaning, Bee, I am sure,” said Charlie, with condescension; “I do full justice to your good intentions. Another fellow might think you wanted to have Delaine here for yourself.”
“Me!” cried Bee, with a wild pang of injured feeling and a sense of the injustice, and inappropriateness, the cruel wrong of such a suggestion. And that Charlie could speak like that—who knew everything! It was almost more than she could bear.
“But I don’t say that,” he went on in his lofty tones. “I know you mean well. It is only that you don’t—that you can’t understand.” How should she? he said to himself with amusing superiority, and a nod of his head as if agreeing to the impossibility. Bee resented the tone, the assumption, the comparison that was implied in every word.
“I wonder,” she cried, “if you ever tell Laura that she doesn’t and can’t understand?”
He stopped short opposite to her, and grasped her arm. “Bee,” he said almost solemnly, “Don’t! If you knew her you would know what folly it is and presumption to compare yourself for one moment!—and do me the favour not to profane that name, as if it were only a girl’s name like your own.”