DIANA came next day, and with her, brought the atmosphere of gay irrepressibleness that belongs to extreme youth. Diana was seventeen. She wore her hair tied, as she expressed it, with a “cat-bow,” and something in the poise of her head, and the shining in her greenish eyes, recalled an alert, half-grown kitten.
She was no beauty, though she carried her head well, and in her slim body, straight as a reed, there was the promise of a figure that would not disgrace the goddess whose name she bore. She laughed a great deal, she chattered more; she was utterly irreverent, and Cecily was glad to have her in the silent house.
“How is Archie?” she inquired in a pause of the conversation carried on during the process of Diana’s unpacking. “Do you hear from him now? Where is he?”
“In Florida. Oh, yes, often; he’s a faithful hound, you know. Prides himself on it. How do you like this blouse?” She shook it out before her sister. “I look perfectly vile in it. But then, I’m such a hideous monkey. Have you noticed that I’m exactly like a monkey, Cis? Look at my monkey eyes!” She sat on the floor and gave a startling imitation of the animal in question.
“Yes, but Archie?” questioned Cecily again, when she had recovered her gravity. “Doesn’t he consider himself engaged to you?”
“He may,” returned Diana, calmly. “I don’t. Where are my silk stockings? I don’t like faithful hounds. And I don’t like matrimony—for women, you know. It’s all right for men. Fancy having to ‘manage’ them, and to pretend to think such an awful lot of them. It’s degrading! I want to show you my sunshade. Isn’t it a sweet color?”
“Oh,” observed Cecily, “is that where you are? Is it the higher education of man you demand?”
“No!” returned Diana, airily. “I don’t care twopence about their education, or whether they ever get any. I just don’t consider them at all.”
“What a counsel of perfection!” exclaimed Cecily. “Go on, Diana. I’m interested. You’re a philosopher. What is the conclusion of the whole matter?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” returned Diana, absently wreathing a nightdress round her neck, while she tilted a hat over her eyes at an absurd angle before the glass. “There’s such a lot of things to do. You can play games, and read books, and go about and see jolly things abroad, and watch people, and see how funny they are. They are just madly funny, aren’t they? There was a woman in the train who sat and looked like this at her husband because he’d tipped a porter too much.” Her face twisted into a ludicrous expression of contemptuous indignation, and resumed its normal contours in the space of a lightning flash. “Oh! and Uncle Henry gets funnier every day; like an infuriated blue-bottle. ‘’Pon my soul, you women! What you’d do without a sensible man in the house! Pom! pom! pom!’—you know.” She took two or three steps before the glass, strutting with puffed-out cheeks, and Uncle Henry rose before Cecily’s mental vision. “Well, there are always people, so it’s easy to be amused. Only you must never care too much about any one, because if you do, you can’t be amused at anything any more, and that’s silly.”