But let it not for an
instant be doubted that they were nice, kind-hearted, well-
behaved, and delightful girls! Because they were. They were not
angels.
"It's too ridiculous!" said Sophia, severely. She had youth,
beauty, and rank in her favour. And to her it really was
ridiculous.
"Poor old Maggie!" Constance murmured. Constance was foolishly
good-natured, a perfect manufactory of excuses for other people;
and her benevolence was eternally rising up and overpowering her
reason.
"What time did mother say she should be back?" Sophia asked.
"Not until supper."
"Oh! Hallelujah!" Sophia burst out, clasping her hands in joy. And
they both slid down from the counter just as if they had been
little boys, and not, as their mother called them, "great girls."
"Let's go and play the Osborne quadrilles," Sophia suggested (the
Osborne quadrilles being a series of dances arranged to be
performed on drawing-room pianos by four jewelled hands).
"I couldn't think of it," said Constance, with a precocious
gesture of seriousness. In that gesture, and in her tone, was
something which conveyed to Sophia: "Sophia, how can you be so
utterly blind to the gravity of our fleeting existence as to ask
me to go and strum the piano with you?" Yet a moment before she
had been a little boy.
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