Agnes Giberne
Mittie's love of self might have led on to a tragedy. Happily the issue was of quite another kind.
"It's going to be a glorious day—just glorious! Joan, we must do something—not sit moping indoors from morning till night!"
Mittie never did sit indoors from morning till night; but this was a figure of speech.
"I'm all alive to be off—I don't care where. Oh, do think of a plan! It's the sort of weather that makes one frantic to be away—to have something happen. Don't you feel so?"
She looked longingly through the bow-window, across the small, neat lawn, divided by low shrubs from a quiet road, not far beyond which lay the river. The sisters were at breakfast together in the morning-room, which was bathed in an early flood of sunshine.
Three years before this date they had been left orphaned and destitute, and had come to their grandmother's home—a comfortable and charming little country house, and, in their circumstances, a very haven of refuge, but, still, a trifle dull for two young girls. Mittie often complained of its monotony. Joan, eighteen months the elder, realised how different their condition would have been had they not been welcomed here. But she, too, was conscious of dulness, for she was only eighteen.
"Think of Something!"
"Such sunshine! It's just ordering us to be out. Joan, be sensible, and think of something we can do—something jolly, something new! Just for one day can't we leave everything and have a bit of fun? I'm aching for a little fun! Oh, do get out of the jog-trot for once! Don't be humdrum!"
"Am I humdrum?" Joan asked. She was not usually counted so attractive as the fluffy-haired, lively Mittie, but she looked very pretty at this moment. The early post had come in; and as she read the one note which fell to her share a bright colour, not often seen there, flushed her cheeks, and a sweet half-glad half-anxious expression stole into her eyes.