ves us in her way,' said Jacinth. 'Everybody can't be the
same. I think you're getting into a very bad habit of grumbling,
Frances. And this afternoon you really should be pleased. For I
shouldn't at all wonder if Lady Myrtle often asks us to go to see her,
and that would be a treat and a change. But what you say about poor
granny and Uncle Marmy reminds me to say something. You really needn't
fly up so on the defensive every time I name them; you did it again
to-day, and I'm sure Lady Myrtle must have thought it very queer, just
as if I'----

But this second reproof for her behaviour at Robin Redbreast did not
find Frances as meek as the former one, which, in deference to Jacinth's
superior knowledge on such subjects, she had felt she perhaps deserved.

'I will "fly up" as you call it,' she interrupted angrily, 'when you
talk in that cold measured way about dear granny and Uncle Marmy, as if
you were almost ashamed of them. For one thing I can't bear you to say
"poor" granny; it's not right. She was a sort of a saint, and I'm quite
sure that now she's'----But here Frances burst into tears.

Jacinth felt sorry, but annoyed and irritated also. She blamed herself
for having begun any private talk of the kind before Eugene and Phebe;
for, as sometimes happened when they had come in late, Phebe was having
tea with them this evening. And she felt conscious also of deserving, to
a certain extent, her sister's blame. But Jacinth had a good deal of
self-control.

'I cannot understand,' she said quietly, though the colour rose to her
cheeks--'I cannot understand how you can think such things of me--as if
I--as if anybody could have loved _them_ more than I did; as if'----But
here the tears rose to her own eyes.

Frances was at once melted.

'I didn't mean _that_,' she said. 'I know you did. I wouldn't love _you_
if I didn't know it. But it's your manner; you seem in such a hurry
always to explain that granny wasn't our own grandmother.'

'I don't think that's fair,' said Jacinth. 'How could I possibly have
helped explaining about it when it is _only_ because of our own
grandmother that Lady Myrtle cares anything at all about us. And I
wasn't in a hurry to explain; don't you remember that Lady Myrtle kept
asking if we were sure our grandmother was only _Mrs_?'

Yes, that had been so, but still the slightly hurt feeling which
Jacinth's tone about the dear Stannesley people had more than once given
Frances still remained,