'I do not think that I care for riding as much as I did,' replies Prue listlessly, plucking the seed-vessel from an overblown dahlia in the border beside her, and idly scattering the seeds over the walk. 'We did not ride much; there were so many more amusing things to do.'
'What sort of things?'
'Oh, they would not have amused you!'
'How do you know that, until you tell me what they were?'
'Oh, they would not have amused you; you are not easily amused. He always says so; and besides,' sinking down with a sigh on the bench under the Judas-tree, 'of what use to talk of them now they are over?'
For a second Peggy shrinks into herself in baffled discouragement, but immediately recovers. She will not be so easily disheartened.
'If they are so amusing,' she says cheerfully, 'perhaps we might adopt some of them here. We are not above learning, are we?'
Prue smiles disdainfully, curling her childish nose.
'In these extensive grounds?'
Nor as time goes on does she grow more communicative about her visit, though it is clear that its incidents occupy her thoughts to the exclusion of all other subjects, and though its influence may be traced in each fragment of her sparse talk. It is one of Peggy's severest daily penalties to recognise in her sister's languid speech continually recurring phrases of Betty's; thin echoes of her flippancies. Prue is even growing to have a dreadful likeness to her model. Possibly this may arise only from Betty's old hat, which she persistently wears; or from the mode of hair-dressing, slavishly copied from her original. That the now fixed bloom in her cheek may be derived from the same source as Lady Betty's, and cause the undeniable resemblance that exists between them, is a supposition too bad to be faced, and that Peggy drives away from her mind as soon as it presents itself. But it recurs. How many disagreeable things do not recur nightly as she lays her head on that pillow which is oftener than not wetted with her tears?