Miss Cecilia Davenant Carter had been at home a good many weeks before
she came to see me. Of course Hugh John was now at college, and
doubtless that made a difference. But she had never stayed away so long
before, and whatever reason Cissy might have to be angry with Master
Hugh John, she had not the least right to take it out on ME!
However, she came at last--chiefly, I think, to show me the gold watch
on her wrist. This she wanted so badly to do that it must have hurt her
dreadfully to stay away as long as she did. So she sat fingering it, but
not running to ask me to admire it, as a girl naturally does. Of course
I took no notice, though it made me feel mean. We talked about the woods
and the autumn tints (schoolgirls always like these two words--they
remind them that it is the season for blackberries and jam), till at
last I was thoroughly ashamed of myself. So I went over to Cissy, and
said, "I think that's the prettiest bracelet I ever saw in all my life!"
And she said, "Do you?" looking up at me funnily. "Do you really?" she
repeated the words, looking straight at me.
"Yes, I do indeed!" I answered. And--what do you think?--the next moment
she was crying on my shoulder! Of course I understood. Every girl will,
without needing to be told. And as for men (and "Old Cats"), it is no
use attempting to explain to them. They never could know just how we two
felt.
But Cissy had really nothing in the least "catty" about her. "Quite the
reverse, I assure _you_!" as the East Country folk say. She even took it
off and let me try it on without ever warning me to be careful with it.
And that, you know, is a good deal for a girl who is "not friends" with
your own brother, and has only had a new "real-gold" watch-bracelet for
three or four weeks.
But then, Cissy could never be calm and restful like Elizabeth
Fortinbras. Cissy did everything in a rush, and so, I suppose, got
somehow closer to the heart of our impassive Hugh John just on that
account. Elizabeth Fortinbras was too like my brother to touch him
"where he lived," as Sir Toady would say.
Well, after a while Cissy stopped crying, and took my handkerchief
without a word and quite as a matter of course (which showed as clearly
as anything how things stood between us).
Then she said, "Priss, do you know, I did an awfully mean thing, and I
want you to help me to make it all right again!"
In a book, of course (a proper book, I mean), I ought to have asked Ciss
all sorts of questions, and said that in everything which did not affect
the honor of the house of Picton Smith I was at her service. And so on.
But of course ordinary girls don't talk like that now-a-days. If you
have what our sweet Maid calls a "snarl" against anybody--why, mostly
every one plays hockey now, and it is the simplest thing in the world to
"take a drive at her shins, and say how sorry you are afterwards"! So at
least (the Maid informs me) some girls, who shall be nameless, have been
known to do at her school.
I waited for Cissy to tell me of the dreadfully mean thing she had done.
But of course I assured her first that, whatever it was--yes,
_whatever_--I should do just what she wanted done to help her. For I
knew she would do the same for me.
Then she told me that in her first anger about the telegram--for she had
been far more angry about that than about the sending back the other
half of the crooked sixpence--a thing which really mattered a thousand
times more (but of course that was exactly like a girl!)--she had put
the telegram, and both parts of the crooked sixpence, and all of Hugh
John's letters she could find--chiefly the short and simple annals of a
Rugby "forward"--in a lozenge-box--and (here Cissy dropped her voice)
_sent them all, registered, to Elizabeth Fortinbras_!