Lavender at that moment seem even more precious than her sisters. Vie continued her lament with bitter emphasis—

“Too bad—too hard—stupendous! Spoil everything. Horrid interfering old thing! If I were your parents I wouldn’t—not for all the money in the world, I wouldn’t sacrifice a child to an old ogre like that! I’d keep my own children and let them be happy while they could, but, of course, if she talks of duty...! If there’s one thing more stupendous than another it’s being put on one’s honour! It gives one no chance. Well, you’ll have to go, I suppose, and our holiday is spoiled. I’ve never been so disappointed in my life.”

“Think of how we feel!” croaked Clemence tragically, but this time the tragedy did not ring so true, for since plain Hannah’s verdict her spirits had risen considerably. Hannah was the shrewdest and cleverest of all five girls, and her prophecies were proverbially correct. Clemence felt sufficiently reassured to reflect that as the eldest in years, she would do well to show an example of resignation. She lengthened her face, and added solemnly—

“I don’t think you ought to talk like that about honour, Vie! It ought to be an incentive. If I go, the only thing that will console me most is the feeling that I am doing my duty!”

Vie stared, and the younger girls coughed in derisive chorus.

“Isn’t it easy to be resigned for somebody else?” demanded plain Hannah of the ceiling. “You are not going, my dear, and you know it. Darsie likes well enough to queen it as a rule, and now she’s got to pay the price. That’s the cost of good looks. Thank goodness no one will ever want to run off with me!—not even a staid old aunt. Tell us about your aunt, by the way—you’ve talked enough about yourselves. Where does she live, and what is she like, and what does she do, and what will you do when you’re there? Have any of you ever seen the place?”

“Not since we were old enough to remember, but mother has been and told us all about it. It’s big, with a lodge, two lodges, and a park all round, very rich, and grand, and respectable, and dull. There are men-servants to wait at table, and the windows are never open, and she drives out every day in a closed carriage, and plays patience at night, and wears two wigs, turn about, a week at a time. Her cheeks are red, the sort of red that is made up of little red lines, and never gets brighter or darker, and she likes to be quiet and avoid excitement. Oh, imagine what it would be like to choose to be quiet, and deliberately run away from a fuss! Can you imagine if you lived a thousand years ever reaching such a pitch as that?”

Darsie held out both hands in dramatic appeal, and her hearers groaned with unction. It was impossible, absolutely beyond the power of imagination to picture such a plight. Each girl hugged to herself the conviction that with her at least would remain immortal youth; that happen what might to the rest of mankind, no length of years could numb her own splendid vitality and joie de vivre.

Not even, and at the thought the three Garnetts sighed in concert, not even Aunt Maria!