Miss Wilson breaks into a laugh. "And there you are all the time looking as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth, and as grave as a judge."
Sally has to acquiesce in being kissed by her friend at this point; but she curls up a little as one who protests against being patronised. "We-e-e-ell!" she says, lengthening out the word, "why not? I don't see anything in that!"
"Oh no, dear—that's all right! Why shouldn't it be?"
But this isn't candid of Lætitia, whose speech and kiss had certainly appeared to impute suppressed insight, or penetration, or sly-pussness, or something of that sort to her young friend. But with an implied claim to rights of insight, on her own account, from seniority. Sally is froissée at this, but not beyond jerking the topic into a new light.
"Of course, it's their being grown up that makes one stare so. If it wasn't for that...." But this gives away her case, surrenders all claim to her equality with Lætitia's twenty-four years. The advantage is caught at meanly.
"That's only because you're a baby, dear. Wait till you're ten
years older, and thirty-eight won't seem so old. I suppose your mother's about that?"
"Mother? Why, she's nearly thirty-nine!"
"And Mr. Fenwick?"
"Oh, he's forty-one. Quite! Because we talked it all over, and made out they were over eighty between them."