Pin was not only changed in looks; her character had changed, too; and
in so marked a way that before a week was out the sisters were at
loggerheads. Each day made it plainer to Laura that Pin was developing
a sturdy independence; she had ceased to look up to Laura as a prodigy
of wisdom, and had begun to hold opinions of her own. She was, indeed,
even disposed to be critical of her sister; and criticism from this
quarter was more than Laura could brook: it was just as if a slave
usurped his master's rights. At first speechless with surprise, she
ended by losing her temper; the more, because Pin was prone to be
mulish, and could not be got to budge, either by derision or by scorn,
from her espoused views. They were those of the school at which for the
past half-year she had been a day-pupil, and seemed to her
unassailable. Laura found them ridiculous, as she did much else about
Pin at this time: her ugliness, her setting herself up as an authority:
and she jeered unkindly whenever Pin came out with them.--A still more
ludicrous thing was that, despite her plainness, Pin actually had an
admirer. True, she did not say so outright; perhaps she was not even
aware of it; but Laura gathered from her talk that a boy at her school,
a boy some three years older than herself, had given her a silk
handkerchief and liked to help her with her sums.--And to Laura this
was the most knockdown blow of all.
One day it came to an open quarrel between them.
They were lying on the beach after bathing, trying to protect their
bare and blistered legs from the sandflies. Laura, flat on her back,
had spread a towel over hers; Pin sat Turk--fashion with her legs
beneath her and fought the flies with her hands. Having vainly
endeavoured to draw from the reticent Laura some of those school-tales
of which, in former holidays, she had been so prodigal, Pin was now
chattering to her heart's content, about the small doings of home.
Laura listened to her with the impatient toleration of one who has seen
the world: she really could not be expected to interest herself in such
trifles; and she laughed in her sleeve at Pin's simpleness. When,
however, her little sister began to enlarge anew on some wonderful
orders Mother had lately had, she could not refrain from saying
crossly: "You've told me that a dozen times already. And you needn't
bawl it out for everyone to hear."
"Oh, Laura! there isn't anyone anywhere near us ... and even if there
were--why, I thought you'd be so pleased. Mother's going to give you an
extra shilling pocket-money, 'cause of it."
"Of course I'm pleased. Don't be so silly, Pin."
"I'm not ALWAYS silly, Laura," protested Pin. "And I don't believe you
ARE glad, a bit. Old Anne was, though. She said: 'Bless her dear
heart!'"
"Old Anne? Well, I just wonder what next! It's none of her dashed
business."
"Oh, Laura!" began Pin, growing tearful both at words and tone. "Why,
Laura, you're not ashamed of it, are you?--that mother does
sewing?"--and Pin opened her lobelia-blue eyes to their widest, showing
what very big eyes they would be, were they not so often swollen with
crying.
"Of course not," said Laura tartly. "But I'm blessed if I can see what
it's got to do with old Anne."
"But she asked me ... what mother was working at--and if she'd got any
new customers. She just loves mother."
"Like her cheek!" snapped Laura. "Poking her ugly old nose into what
doesn't concern her. You should just have said you didn't know."
"But that would have been a story, Laura!" cried Pin, horrified "I did
know--quite well."
"Goodness gracious, Pin, you----"
"I've never told a story in my life," said Pin hotly. "And I'm not
going to either, for you or anyone. I think you ought to be ashamed of
yourself."
"Hold your silly tongue!"
"I shan't, Laura. And I think you're very wicked. You're not a bit like
what you used to be. And it's all going to school that's done
it--Mother says it is."
"Oh, don't be such a blooming ass!" and Laura, stung to the quick,
retaliated by taunting Pin with the change that had come to pass in her
appearance. To her surprise, she found Pin grown inordinately touchy
about her looks: at Laura's brutal statement of the truth she cried
bitterly.
"I'm not, no, I'm not! I haven't got a full moon for a face! It's no
fatter than yours. Sarah said last time you were home how fat you were
getting."
"I'm sure I'm not," said Laura, indignant in her turn.
"Yes, you are," sobbed Pin. "But you only think other people are ugly,
not yourself I'll tell mother what you've said as soon as ever I get
home. And I'll tell her, too, you want to make me tell stories. And
that I'm sure you've done something naughty at school, 'cause you won't
ever talk about it. And how you're always saying bad words like
blooming and gosh and golly--yes, I will!"
"You were always a sneak and a tell-tale."
"And you were always a greedy, selfish, deceitful thing."
"You don't know anything about me, you numbskull, you!"
"I don't want to! I know you're a bad, wicked girl."
After this exchange of home truths, they did not speak to each other
for two days: Pin had a temper that smouldered, and could not easily
forgive. So she stayed at old Anne's side, helping to bake scones and
leatherjackets; or trotted after the boys, who had dropped into the way
of saying: "Come on, little Pin!" as they never said: "Come on, Laura!"
and Laura retired in lonely dudgeon to the beach.
She took the estrangement so much to heart that she eased her feelings
by abusing Pin in thought; Pin was a pig-headed little ignoramus, as
timid as ever of setting one foot before the other. And the rest of
them would be just the same--old stick-in-the muds, unchanged by a
hair, or, if they HAD changed, then changed for the worse. Laura had
somehow never foreseen the day on which she would find herself out of
tune with her home circle; with unthinking assurance she had expected
that Pin, for instance, would always be eager to keep pace with her.
Now, she saw that her little sister would probably never catch up to
her again. Such progress as Pin might make--if she were not already
glued firm to her silly notions--would be in quite another direction.
For the quarrel had made one thing plain to Laura: with regard to her
troubles, she need not look to Pin for sympathy: if Pin talked such
gibberish at the hint of putting off an inquisitive old woman, what
would she--and not she alone--what would they all say to the tissue of
lies Laura had spun round Mr. Shepherd, a holy man, a clergyman, and a
personal friend of Mother's into the bargain? She could not blink the
fact that, did it come to their ears, they would call her in earnest,
what Pin had called her in her temper--bad and wicked. Home was, alas!
no longer the snug nest in which she was safe from the slings and
shanghais of the world.
And then there was another thing: did she stay at home, she would have
to re-live herself into the thousand and one gimcrack concerns, which
now, as set forth by Pin, so bored her: the colic Leppie had brought on
by eating unripe fruit; the fact that another of Sarah's teeth had
dropped out without extraneous aid. It was all very well for a week or
two, but, at the idea of shutting herself wholly up with such mopokes,
of cutting herself off from her present vital interests, Laura hastily
reconsidered her decision to leave school. No: badly as she had
suffered at her companions' hands, much as she dreaded returning, it
was at school she belonged. All her heart was there: in the doings of
her equals, the things that really mattered--who would be promoted, who
prefect, whose seat changed in the dining-hall.--Besides, could one who
had experienced the iron rule of Mr. Strachey, or Mrs. Gurley, ever be
content to go back and just form one of a family of children? She not,
at any rate!
Thus she lay, all day long, her hands clasped under her neck, a small
white speck on the great wave-lapped beach. She watched the surf break,
watched the waves creep up and hide the reef, watched the gulls vanish
in the sun-saturated blue overhead. Sometimes she rose to her elbow to
follow a ship just inside the horizon; and it pleased her to think that
this great boat was sailing off, with a load of lucky mortals, to some
unknown, fairer world, while she, a poor Cinderella, had to stop
behind--even though she knew it was only the English mail going on to
Sydney. Of Pin she preferred not to think; nor could she dwell with
equanimity on her late misfortunes at school and the trials that
awaited her on her reappearance; and since she HAD to think of
something, she fell into the habit of making up might-have-been, of
narrating to herself how things would have fallen out had her fictions
been fact, her ascetic hero the impetuous lover she had made of
him.--In other words, lying prostrate on the sand, Laura went on with
her story.
When, towards the end of the third week, she and Pin were summoned to
spend some days with Godmother, she had acquired such a gusto for this
occupation, that she preferred to shirk reality, and let Pin pay the
visit alone.